Al Perrotta is traveling. Buckle up.

Just days after my essay appeared suggesting that the most economical explanation for Pope Francis’ persecution of Catholics is that he’s in fact an unbeliever, more filth has washed in from Rome. Francis’ old crony from Argentina, Cardinal “Tucho” Fernández, recently greenlit public Catholic blessings of same-sex couples. That has provoked a revolt by faithful bishops and priests around the world, thanks be to God. Now it turns out that Fernández has an unsettling history of … unhealthy interest (for a vowed celibate man) in the mechanics of sexual pleasure and even … the erotic fantasy lives of teenage girls. I’ll let this tweet tell the story:

The Tucho scandal is one of corruption at the heart of the Vatican.

Cardinal “Tucho” Fernández, known as a “close collaborator” and “primary ghostwriter” to Pope Francis, they became friends/allies in Argentina.

Pope Francis appointed Tucho as Prefect of the Dicastery for the… pic.twitter.com/Ancigb3GDD

— Fr Calvin Robinson (@calvinrobinson) January 9, 2024

As Liz Lemon on 30 Rock might aver at this juncture: “Blerg.”

Those Other Human Traffickers Are Just Terrible!

In other Vatican news, Pope Francis has engaged in his usual gambit. When he’s caught steering the ship onto some libertine or leftist iceberg, and people complain … he says something that sounds authentically Christian, even Catholic. So in the days after he publicly embraces an abortionist, or covers for Communist China, he’ll fire some flare to the right, in the form of a remark warning against Satan or regretting the porn epidemic. And that helps some Catholics get through just one more day.

The latest Francis headfake? He rightly denounced surrogate pregnancy contracts as grotesque and inhuman. They’re just part of the larger plague of IVF, which commoditizes tiny human beings and leaves hundreds of thousands of them frozen indefinitely in some man-made, high-tech Limbo. But Francis went further, and stepped right off a cliff. He called surrogacy contracts a form of “human trafficking.”

Really? You’re equating women renting out their wombs (a grotesque evil, of course) to rich, eager couples to … little children being kidnapped, or entrusted by their parents to cartels, then put at risk of sexual enslavement? Tragically, as a Catholic, I have to point out here that the U.S. Catholic bishops are one of the major players in real human trafficking — hand in glove with the Biden regime, which recently got rid of DNA tests for illegal immigrant children, so that when we hand them over to “relatives,” there’s no way of checking if those in fact are sex industry predators.

As Joseph D’Hippolito wrote at The Stream, quoting Catholic lawmakers who sought to expose this corruption, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and its agencies such as Catholic Charities

received a total of $3.053 billion between 2008 and 2022. During that period, Catholic Charities collected $1.86 billion, while the USCCB got $1.113 billion in direct federal grants, the fifth largest total among all agencies. From that $1.113 billion, the USCCB gave $586 million to Catholic Charities.

The USCCB not only acts as a contractor distributing funds. It also uses the money to finance dioceses and to compensate for funds lost in settling cases of clerical sex abuse. Complicit Clergy, a Catholic website, noted that the $3 billion in federal funds received matches the amount lost in those settlements.

To keep the money coming, various agencies actively encourage migrants to enter the United States illegally, even to the point of guiding large caravans to the border, as The Stream reported. “The Catholic ‘Underground Railroad’ of migrant safe houses that extend across Central America, through Mexico, and up to and into the U.S. is a well-oiled machine,” wrote Michelle Malkin, a Catholic.

While investigating the role NGOs play in human smuggling, the Heritage Foundation found through geofencing that Catholic Charities, at its facility in San Juan, Texas, used nearly 3,400 separate mobile phones to link anonymous contacts in 433 of the nation’s 435 Congressional districts. 

Among the migrants are children, including many who arrive without parents or guardians. As a result, the Unaccompanied Alien Children Program has received more direct federal grants than any other federal immigration. In 2022, Catholic agencies received about $97 million of the $2.709 billion allocated to the program.

Yet many of those children become targets for sexual predators and traffickers who also enter the United States illegally. Project Veritas discovered 44 children living at one address and another 25 at a separate address. One 16-year old admitted to being pimped by her so-called aunt.

Elizabeth Yore, former general counsel for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and a conservative Catholic, called Catholic Charities “probably the number one or two NGO that is handling the trafficking of children,” she said. “Sexual predators go where vulnerable children are. You can’t tell me that there aren’t hundreds, if not thousands, of sexual predators who are posing as sponsors for these vulnerable children.”

Maybe sit this one out, Pope Francis.

Ray “Storm the Capitol” Epps Gets Community Service for Orchestrating January 6 Chaos

No way this guy is a fed. I mean, Ray Epps is just the guy we see on video in one place after another urging peaceful, calm January election integrity protestors to illegally storm the U.S. Capitol. So of course he gets zero jailtime, a modest fine, and community service. Because he’s not a fed at all. Am I right? That’s why the Justice Department has scrubbed the details of Ray Epps’ plea deal from its official website, because it has nothing to hide.

Darren Beattie explains just how shocking this development really is in this priceless X thread. Click on it to read the whole thing through to the bitter end. Then ask yourself what Republicans such as Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and your local congressman have been doing and saying about January 6 for the past three years.

2/x They know Epps is the smoking gun.

And this likely is the beginning of a monumental damage control campaign

— Darren J. Beattie 🌐 (@DarrenJBeattie) July 14, 2022

And to follow the grotesque political persecution of patriotic Americans by the Deep State and the Uniparty, subscribe to the Substack of the great Julie Kelly.

Black Lives Don’t Matter if They’re Nigerian Christians

The Gateway Pundit reports that the Biden administration refuses to classify the persecution of Christians in Nigeria as a matter of concern:

The Biden administration has rejected recommendations from dozens of leading human rights, religious freedom, and Christian groups to reverse course and redesignate Nigeria to its blacklist of worst offenders when it comes to allowing citizens to practice the religion of their choice.

…

Blinken’s decision not to designate Nigeria and India earned an immediate rebuke from the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom, whose leaders are appointed by Congress and make recommendations to the State Department. The commission, which has repeatedly called for both countries to be placed on the official blacklist, expressed “extreme disappointment” with the decision and called on Congress to hold a hearing on the “failure” of the State Department to follow its recommendations.

“USCIRF rejects the State Department’s decision to omit Nigeria and India as CPCs. We met with the State Department on many occasions to sound the alarm about these countries but not all of our recommendations have been followed,” USCIRF Chair Abraham Cooper and Vice Chair Frederick Davie said in a statement. “We will not be deterred and will continue our role as a congressionally mandated watchdog to ensure the U.S. government prioritizes religious freedom as a key component of U.S. foreign policy.”

Along The Stream

Don’t miss The Daily Signal’s detailed, granular report on just how many feds were in the crowd (maybe leading it?) on January 6, 2021.

Want to know why the Biden gang wants to pull down the statue of pacifist religious liberty advocate and friend of American Indians William Penn? So do I. Read my thoughts on the real reason here: “They Hate Us Because We’re Americans.”

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His upcoming book is No Second Amendment, No First.