The Cranky Pope

Hard on the heels of the explosive and exploding incidences of women revealing for the first time the identities of their sexual abusers, a phenomenon of unveiling a dark hidden secret of many men in positions of power and influence using their positions to prey on women whose careers they are capable of advancing or retarding, a public figure of immense authority has stepped into the fray, and in all likelihood not by intention but through a momentary irascible backlash flash of irritation.

"The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I'll speak."
"There is not one shred of proof against him. It's all calumny. Is that clear?"
Pope Francis, Santiago, Chile

Pope Francis has accused victims of Chile’s most notorious paedophile of slander, in an astonishing end to a visit meant to help heal the wounds of a sex abuse scandal that has cost the Catholic church its credibility in the country. The Guardian

"As if I could have taken a selfie or a photo while Karadima abused me and others and Juan Barros stood by watching it all."
"These people are truly crazy, and the pontiff talks about atonement to the victims. Nothing has changed, and his plea for forgiveness is empty."
Juan Carlos Cruz, accuser

"[It is] sad and wrong [for the Pope to discredit the victims since] the burden of proof here rests with the church, not the victims -- and especially not with victims whose veracity has already been affirmed."
"He has just turned back the clock to the darkest days of this crisis. Who knows how many victims now will decide to stay hidden, for fear they will not be believed?"
Anne Barrett Doyle, online database BishopAccountability.org

Pope Francis, pressed for a comment by a Chilean journalist with respect to the status of Bishop Juan Barros whom he had named bishop of the southern diocese of Osorno in Chile at a time when victims of Barros's superior, the Rev.Fernando Karadima were accusing him of rampant sexual crimes, snapped back with the response that made it quite clear he failed to believe the accusations of the victims that Bishop Barros knew, and had even witnessed that abuse.

In one fell swoop not only turning asunder his main thrust of address in travelling to Chile with the purpose of apologizing for the horrendous misdeeds of the Catholic Church when its priests pledged to celibacy chose to pursue other avenues of satisfying their sexual desires by targeting children and parishioners for abuse. It was always widely recognized that these events took place, and that superiors within the Church sought to keep the scandal within the church, never admitting it took place, simply transferring the offending priest to another parish to repeat his sins anew.

In effect, this is what the Pontiff himself has done, irrespective of his sincere apology on behalf of the Catholic Church. Loyal Catholics who had been abused had attempted for years to apprise the church hierarchy of what was occurring only to hit a blank wall of indifference and disbelief. Sexual abuse and the cover up of the church is legendary. The Archbishop of Santiago eventually apologized for refusing to believe victims once they spread their stories at large and they became news of shocking importance.

Yet knowing that the victims' stories had been substantiated, Pope Francis still chose to believe that the man he named as Bishop, a former Karadima protege, could honourable and in good faith be accepted by the Osorno community as their church authority, in so doing repeating the very routine the church always engaged in when confronted by such abuse. As far as the Osorno controversy was concerned where people refused to consider Bishop Barros as their bishop, Pope Francis spoke of the controversy as "stupid".

This, from a man claiming himself to be dedicated to serving the people, not the classical indulgences of the church hierarchy. "Isn't the pastoral problem that we're living (in Osorno) enough to get rid of him?" asked Juan Carlos Claret, spokesman for a group of Osorno lay Catholics whose three-year campaign against Barros no doubt added to the Pope's rejection of the claims by parishioners that they could not respect an insider who had stood by and done nothing to help stop the abuse.

This is the church establishment which has vowed to do penance for the past, for having accused victims of slandering and attacking the church with unsubstantiated claims. And which Pope Francis set out to reverse, assuring Catholics that the church had much to apologize for and he was the man to assuage the wounds. Instead, he has chosen to open a new wound by the expedience of reverting to the former stance of the church, accusing the accusers.

A "tremendous error" in judgement by the Pope, according to to German Silva, political scientist at Universidad Mayor in Santiago, that will reverberate in Chile and beyond.

Misunderstanding Islam

"It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam. However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest."
"May all of our brothers and sisters on this continent, like the good Samaritan, come to your [Syrian refugees and migrants on the island of Lesbos] aid in the spirit of fraternity, solidarity and respect for human dignity."
"Yes, Europe has Christian roots and it is Christianity’s responsibility to water those roots. [But] this must be done in a spirit of service [not ultra-nationalism]." 
"When I hear talk of the Christian roots of Europe, I sometimes dread the tone, which can seem triumphalist or even vengeful. It then takes on colonialist overtones."
"In Brussels, the terrorists were Belgians, children of migrants, but they grew up in a ghetto. In London, the new mayor took his oath of office in a cathedral and will undoubtedly meet the Queen. This illustrates the need for Europe to rediscover its capacity to integrate."
"I don’t like to talk about Islamic violence, because every day, when I read the newspaper, I see violence."
"When fundamentalism goes as far as murdering … you can murder with your tongue and also with the knife."
"I believe that it’s not fair to identify Islam with violence. It’s not fair and it’s not true. I know how they think. They look for peace, encounter."
"[European youth, many have been left] with no ideals, no work, that end in the hands of drugs and alcohol, and then go over there [abroad] and enlist."
"It’s a fundamentalist group that calls itself ISIS, but it can’t be said, it’s not true, and it’s not fair, that Islam is terrorist."
"As long as the god of money is at the center of the global economy and not the human person, man and woman, this is the first terrorism. [A] terrorism at the bases [against the whole of humanity]…."
Pope Francis 

Swiss Guards salute Pope Francis as he arrives for the opening session of the CEI, Italian Episcopal Conference, at the Vatican on May 16. (Alessandra Tarantino/AP)

"[Pope Francis is] a man of peace[and] a man who respects other religions and shows consideration for their followers."
"Here I would like to say that the issue must not be presented as persecution of Christians in the East, but on the contrary there are more Muslim than Christian victims, and we all suffer this catastrophe together."
Sheik Ahmed el-Tayyib, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque

Sheik Ahmed el-Tayyib, right, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, shakes hands with Pope Francis during a private audience in the Apostolic Palace, at the Vatican, Monday, May 23, 2016. (L'Osservatore Romano/Pool photo via AP)

Could we have it on greater authority that Islam is a religion of peace, a religion greatly misunderstood by those not of the faith but who have observed that Islam is the fount of terrorism that impacts the globe, from the Middle East to Asia, Africa to Europe, North America to Oceania? Islamist terror has inflicted itself through the fundamental call of Islam to its faithful, reminding them of their obligation to jihad, as pressing an obligation as is surrender to Islam since it represents a major tenet of the faith.

It is understood, needless to say, that within the Muslim world itself, there are countless victims of violence. Islam is not only at war with the world of non-Muslims for the affront they represent to Islam of refusing to accept that Allah is the only and absolute ruler of the universe and the world we inhabit, but Muslims adhering to the wrong sect of Islam, like the Ahmadiyya considered heretic and an offense to Allah are persecuted as well. Does that exonerate Islam?

None of which points to Islam as a religion of peace. Attacks against Westerners, against infidels, Jews and Christians, Hindus and Buddhists -- all of which predated Islam as world religions -- take place because daily prayers in most mosques wherever they are located across the world conclude with an imprecation against unbelievers, and Muslims are enjoined by their imams and mullahs to take up jihad in the name of the Prophet Mohammad who showed them the way to conquest.

Whereas Pope Francis's predecessor, Pope Benedict ventured into the minefield of Islam's violent roots of conquest, Pope Francis has chosen to sidestep the issue, and in fact, to deny that Islam is a violent religion based on conquest meant to destroy all other religions, to finally see Islam in complete and totalitarian theistic domination of the globe. His placatory denials, refusals to utter such damning phrases as "Islamic terrorism" or "violent jihad", linking Islam with the cult of violence and death betray him as either naive or clueless or devious.

Citing the vital necessity of religious tolerance and to emphaze what Christianity and Islam have in common is to play a game of submission to a fantasy which world events amply demonstrate is false. The commonly heard "Allahu Akbar" signals an intent to embark upon a venture that is geared to cause vicious harm to purported enemies of Islam who must pay with their lives for conspiring to defy the Prophet's declaration that the world must surrender to his 'one true god' whom he created out of the writing of the Old Testament of Judaism.

There is a metaphor at play here, and a very troubling one, of a Christendom that has faltered, one that the faithful have abandoned, one where in a French church a priest of aged repute set out to conduct mass to a sparse audience of five elderly faithful; two parishioners, three nuns, and himself. This is a church in undeniable decline, though it counts among its faithful the largest demographic worldwide, active now in the developing world, in its death throes in Europe.

And into Europe has come a deluge of Muslims carrying Islam with them in a different kind of jihad, the one of patience and demographics, the second most-populous religion in the world and the only one that is on a steady growth trajectory. A wizened old priest murdered by two young Frenchmen of Islamic origin obeying the call to jihad, in service to Islamic State whose grasping tentacles have re-invigorated jihad and enlisted the interest of young jihadists across the globe.

Yet Pope Francis declares that it is not religion, and certainly not Islam, the religion of peace that motivates these ardent martyrs-in-waiting, but the wretched effects of an underclass, a poverty-stricken world of benighted ignorance which those capitalists whose wealth surpasses those of the countries the underprivileged come from to flood Europe and North America, that is at fault. A fault that dialogue and interfaith communalism can correct.

We must, in the face of Islamist exceptionalism and its inexorably entitled drive to violent conquest, exhibit compassion and understanding, not defence, and the unforgivable denial of the peaceful nature of Islam.

Clarifying the Obvious: WHAT OTHERS?!

"I only want to clarify that, when I speak of war, I am really speaking of war. A war of interests, for money, resources, dominion of peoples."
"I am not speaking of a war of religions. Religions don't want war. The others want war."
Pope Francis

Osservatore Romano/AFP/Getty Images  Pope Francis in Poland on Wednesday.

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on — perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara — by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between — as they were called — three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point — itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole — which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that sura 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood — and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: "For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.
12 September 2006 lecture by Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg in Germany

Pope Benedict's scholarly erudition in the annals of the Vatican's treasured bibliography in the Catholic Church's relations with Islam certainly elicited an emphatic, outraged response from Islam. And the good Pope was forced by obvious interests in maintaining calmly harmonious relations between the two religions to apologize abjectly for misinterpreting the intolerable insult to Islam. Pope Francis doubtless took that lesson in humility and caution seriously enough to convince him that direct criticism of Islam as a religion espousing other than peace is inadvisable.

"He wanted to specify very clearly, he doesn't mean a war of religions", clarified Vatican spokesman the Reverend Federico Lombardi, of this veritable minefield best side-stepped. No doubt 85-year-old Reverend Jacques Hamel who was slaughtered in his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, France, would sagaciously have nodded his head in assent, having no further use of his life at his advanced age, other than to further good relations between Islam and the Catholic Church.

"The terrorists held me with a revolver at my neck. He [Father Hamel] fell down looking upward, toward us", said 86-uear-old Jeanine, one of the four hostages taken by the two Islamists at the church while morning mass was led by Father Hamel. Her husband, Guy, had been handed a cellphone with instructions that he take photographs of the atrocity being served for their observation as the two attackers slit the elderly priest's throat on the floor of the chancel.

And when they finished with the priest they then turned on her husband, slashing him repeatedly. He remains in hospital suffering from serious injuries. The elderly couple and the priest were held along with two nuns. One nun at the morning mass that had gone so horribly awry, had managed to slip away to alert police who confronted the murderers outside the church, killing them. They were locals, two 19-year-old men who had aspired to fight with Islamic State in Syria.

Unable to leave France by alerted authorities, both were under watch, both understood to be ISIL sympathizers, both managing to fulfill their obligations to Islamic State, jihad and the responsibility of the faithful to Koranic injunctions which instruct that none should hesitate to commit to jihad as a major tenet of the faith. But shush! don't be too free in discussing this other than obliquely, euphemisms and circumlocution most highly recommended.

Headlines in sensitive news media should reflect the fact that two young Muslims lost their lives near a church in France, so sad.

"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Say After Me ....

"The misuse and destruction of the environment are also accompanied by a relentless process of exclusion. A selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged."
"Any harm done to the environment, therefore is harm done to humanity. The ecological crisis, and the large-scale destruction of biodiversity, can threaten the very existence of the human species."
"Consequently, the defence of the environment and the fight against exclusion demand that we recognize a moral law written into human nature itself."
Pope Francis, United Nations

Pope Francis urged world leaders to care for the planet and the world’s poorest people. Later, the General Assembly adopted 17 goals, which extend through 2030. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times

"There may be some kind of inconsistency here between what the Pope has said and what the church is doing in U .S. oil and gas country."
"[As the church acquires mineral rights through parishioner donation there might be] legal or fiduciary reasons] to lease them out."
Mickey Thompson, consultant, former director, Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association

 In June, Pope Francis circulated among his faithful an encyclical pointing out the need to phase out highly-polluting fossil fuels in the battle against climate change, which is incumbent upon all, as an obligatory moral duty. Perhaps his visit to the United States has been calculated to remind his American dioceses that they have a duty to heed his papal words of direction.

In the archdiocese of Oklahoma City three new oil and gas leases have been signed by church officials in the wake of Francis's missive on the environment. Although they are not forbidden from investing in the energy industry, guidelines on ethical investing from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops warn Catholic institutions against investing in those companies stained by abortion, contraception, pornography, tobacco and war.

While failing to specifically address the ownership of energy-production interests. In a review of country documents Reuters discovered 235 oil and gas leasing deals which had been signed by Catholic Church authorities in Texas and Oklahoma with energy and land companies since 2010 in 56 counties inside the two states, though none of the Texas leases had been signed after the Pope's encyclical.

A boom in American energy production in recent years, most notably through the controversial hydraulic fracturing production method known as fracking has seen those states at the forefront of undersigning deals. Church authorities gain royalties ranging from 15 to 25 percent on the value of petroleum extraction. The church acquires its mineral rights via the medium of parishioner donations, most often.

An United States Conference of Catholic Bishops official declined comment to a Reuters interviewer, understandably. While the Vatican has no direct power over U.S. church investment decisions, their diocesan bishops do. And it is the bishops who are answerable to the higher order of the Vatican. And there is none higher in that executive theological power structure than the Pope, quite obviously.

Creating a deep moral dissonance in the wake of the Pope's clear attack on human-caused climate change. Dioceses granting oil leases in recent years include Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio. A spokesman for the Diocese of Fort Worth stated that the diocese received $31,661 from its leases in 2015, declining to affirm whether consideration was given by the diocese for a review of its program in reflection of the Pope's encyclical.

About a quarter of the roughly 165 church lease deals signed since 2010 were granted by the archdiocese of Oklahoma City and most of the rest granted through the Catholic Foundation of Oklahoma and the St. Gregory's Catholic University of Oklahoma. The lease royalties don't seem all that compellingly rich, enough so to influence such questionable investments that come at the cost of moral iniquity.

Leading to the question, is the Catholic Church in the U.S. so fiscally challenged that it is prepared to degrade its moral imperatives as designated by the Shepherd of Rome?

Breaking With Tradition

"A divorcee who takes communion is not doing anything wrong. There are some priests who are more papist than the Pope."
"It is an issue we are discussing in the Vatican, because a divorcee who takes communion is not doing anything wrong."
Pope Francis -- Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio

"We would neither confirm nor deny that -- this was a private telephone call made by the Holy Father and we would not divulge the details."
Vatican spokesman

"One of the most wonderful things in my life has just happened -- receiving a telephone call from none other than Papa Francesco. We're Catholics, we believe in God, and though we don't go to Mass every Sunday, every evening we thank the Lord for our family and our work."
Julio Sabetta, pastry chief, Argentina

ALESSANDRO BIANCHI/REUTERS

An Argentinian woman concerned that if she took communion she would be "violating Church rules", wrote to Pope Francis to inform him she had been refused communion by her local priest. The priest "told me that every time I went home, I was going back to living in sin", explained Jacqui Lisbona.

She had married a divorced man, though they were both Catholic. Under existing church law divorce and re-marriage are simply not recognized. Jacqui Lisbona could not take communion because she had married a divorced man and because they were prohibited from marrying in church and arranged instead for a civil ceremony; twice a sinner.

The couple has been married for 19 years. They have two teenage daughters. This was not by any means the first time Pope Francis had directly responded personally to an appeal from an individual whose soul was in a troubled state. On this occasion, the pontiff telephoned Ms. Lisbona at her home on Easter Monday where she lived in the central region of Santa Fe, Argentina.

Her husband happened to answer the telephone from the individual who introduced himself as "Father Bergoglio", apologizing that it had taken him so long to get around to calling after he had received the letter from the troubled woman. Under church law, unless a marriage is annulled, Catholics who remarry are seen to be living in sin, committing adultery, and thus refused communion.

But this pope has stated that divorced and separated couples should not be excluded from church events, raising hopes that he may take it upon himself to overturn the ban on divorcees receiving communion. Priests should "ask themselves how to help (divorced couples) from feeling excluded from the mercy of God", he has previously stated.

This man is a long-overdue breath of fresh air battling absurd constricting social/religious convention in a fusty institution that has too long been infested with corruption and sanctimony.

Holocaust Archaeology: Yahad-In Unum

"The purpose of my organization Yahad-In Unum (Hebrew "together"; Latin "One") is to look for the victims. We are not looking for the killers; we are looking for the victims."
"In many genocides, we only remember the names of the killers. The Jews have given sanctity to the names of the victims so that we remember them."
"We are now 23 full-time in my organization. I'm not alone now. All are younger than me."
"My goal is to give back to the families so they can pray and say Kaddish on the mass graves. The second goal is to give back the Jewish victims to the Jewish people. The third one is to fight the Holocaust deniers."
"We are investigating the crimes of Hitler against the Jews ... [and] we have interviewed 3,800 neighbours who were present at the killings. They could look through the window. They were not collaborators. They were teenagers who ... saw everything."
"They are now old and they want to speak before they die. For the majority of them, it is the first time they speak. We have recorded all of them and it is accessible through our website."
"I want to say to the young people, perhaps one day you will be a doctor, perhaps you will be a soldier or a journalist, and you will be in a country of genocide. You must take a photo and send it to CNN or somewhere, and that's the way you will protect humanity ... There is a Russian proverb in all these countries that says the work is over when the last victim is buried. If we don't do this, in future we will have no evidence of this crime."

 Father Patrick Desbois, head of Yahad-in Unum   http://www.yahadinunum.org

Father Patrick Desbois is a French Catholic priest. He has elected himself to bear witness to a mass atrocity, to remember and to find evidence, and to record and to memorialize. It is beyond human capacity to really understand what happened, why it happened, how it happened, that during World War II Nazi Germany strayed from the focus of world domination for the Third Reich, to perfect the world they envisioned by removing from it all traces of the presence of European Jewry as a start to eliminating Jews world-wide.

What is beyond human understanding is the capacity for some humans to demonstrate their capacity for mass slaughter, and to consider it a benefit to the world. To select an ancient people that persevered through countless millennia, to retain its faith and its cohesion as an ethnic group, with its distinct culture, heritage and religion, against all adversities. And adversity was never in short supply throughout the history of the Jewish people. And nor, since the advent of the Holocaust and beyond is it now in short supply. Father Desbois has dedicated his efforts to the memory of those who perished.

The founding of Yahad-In Unum took place in 2004, a joint project between leaders of France's Catholic and Jewish communities as a measure to bring Jews and Catholics together for a common purpose in shared humanity. The major initiative of the organization is meant to investigate and identify sites of mass graves of Jews murdered by German Fascist mobile killing units, called the Einsatzgruppen. And to look for their remains in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Moldova and Romania.

The pathological viral mental derangement more commonly spoken of as anti-Semitism had long found fertile ground and a comfortable home in Europe. Hitler and his minions felt that Germans were too civilized, would be too squeamish about having death camps positioned on German soil, so most of those concentration, labour and death camps were located elsewhere throughout Europe, where pogroms were not uncommon, and where it was less likely that any protests would arise, should anyone find the institutionalized obliteration of a people morally offensive.

Through dedicated on-the-ground research, Yahad-In-Unum has discovered evidence of mass graves in "village after village", representing the work of the Einsatzgruppen, separating the local Jewish population from their non-Jewish counterparts and eliminating them, men, women and children, in well organized operations, and in calculated cold blood. Yahad-In-Unum has signed a contract with the American Jewish Committee to ensure that revealed sites would be respected, "the graves will be protected forever and not be desecrated".

Father Desbois wears many hats, besides his anti-racist historical-humanitarian one; he is director of the Episcopal Committee for Relations with Judaism, itself connected with the French Conference of Bishops. His grandfather was a French soldier, deported to the Nazi prison camp Rawa-Ruska during the Second World War. Father Desbois himself studied anti-Semitism at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, as well as undertaking the study of Jewish religion and culture with a leader of the Jewish community in France.

Father Desbois embarked on a trip to Ukraine in 2002 to see for himself where his grandfather had been imprisoned, and while there he planned to pay his respects at a memorial he was certain he would find there. When he arrived he discovered to his amazement that there was no evidence, no kind of commemoration to the one-and-a-quarter-million Jews whose lives had been destroyed in Ukraine and Belarus. And he resolved to rectify that blatant oversight in respect and honour for the victims of morbidly destructive racism.

After founding Yaham-In Unum, he set about collecting information revolving around the mass killings of Jews and Roma in east Europe between 1941 and 1944. With the help of translators, Father Desbois along with others conducts interviews with witnesses. And with the use of metal detectors, he and his team have succeeded in unearthing German cartridges and bullets from pits where the bodies of the slaughtered were discarded, along with jewellery belonging to the victims, and other artifacts.

He has written a book outlining the immensity of the project: The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest's Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews.

Tuesday March the 4th, Father Desbois has been awarded the Crif award "in recognition of his commitment to the truth"