The Wholly Rotten Criminal Church - 07
Typing this question in Google’s search bar delivers 76.10 million search results in 0.86 seconds, but you have to look really hard for a result that addresses it. Interestingly enough, the Vatican appears in the top ten results with an article about 13 Christians being killed every day because of their faith. Some fact checking quickly reveals that the Vatican is simply lying about these numbers and more over, it includes people that have been killed by the Catholic Church. Whatever can be said about this disgusting organization, you cannot but respect its prowess in propaganda. People being killed for whatever reason is not something to be applauded but the Catholic Church uses the numbers, including those killed by the Catholic Church, as a badge of honor while appealing to people's sympathy and compassion. Just as the HRCC has always pumped up the number of Christian martyrs in the first centuries of its existence, it resorts to the same old tactics by simply lying about the facts. At the same time, it tries to whitewash the truth about its own crimes past and present, calling the death of thousands of victims of the Inquisition "not so bad'. A black swan amidst the Catholic and Protestant propaganda factories flooding the internet is one article that does touch on one aspect of the question at hand, as it gives a brief history on the legality of abortion. I’ll come back to this briefly, as it is certainly one way the Catholic Church (among other religious organizations) is directly responsible for the death of thousands of people every year.
On the whole, search results selected by Google are articles that deal with this question in the past tense. While many among those admit that the Catholic Church certainly was responsible for a lot of deaths, a good part of them try to whitewash the crimes against humanity or pretend the HRCC’s crimes are a thing of a long gone past.
The number one result popping immediately into view (although it also answers the question as if I was asking it in the past tense), is an answer given on Quora.com. It is also the absolute pinnacle of bovine excrement. It should come as no surprise that the answer comes from a Catholic and worse, a recent convert to Catholicism (there are none as blind and fanatical as newly converted). The respondent, Mr. Harold Gomes also has a certificate in graphic design and proudly announces that he is very committed. Indeed he should be. Another answer I will look into is one from a theologian, as theologians know the mind of god and therefore everything. I included their full answer in the reference section. To me, both respondents are a testimony that nothing turns intelligent people into absolute morons like religious bias.
"Father" Richard Lavigne, member of the Wholly Rotten Criminal Cartel is just one of the thousands of clergy members who teach about absolute morality and the omnibenevolence of their child-loving god, while raping dozens of children. Unlike Renato Poblete Barth, featured in the previous post, there is no evidence that he ordered any abortions following pregnancies caused by his seed of faith, as he seemed only to rape young boys; he did abort one 13-year old rape victim of his however. Having accepted Jesus in his heart, the murdering and raping priest escaped justice by passing on to heaven just before being indicted for the murder. He did not indicate whether he planned to continue raping children in god's invisible realm.
1. Killed by Catholics
I will give some examples to show that we don’t have to go back 8, 6 or 4 centuries to find the Catholic Church killing thousands of people. But I can’t help myself and immediately address the biggest pile of horse dung ever secreted by a Catholic ‘apologist’. The literal question (as my question seems be too elusive) answered is:
"How many people has the Catholic Church killed?" Mr. Gomes’ opening statement (bold text and numbers added):
The answer is zero. 1. The Catholic Church has killed no one. People within the Catholic Church have killed people. Big difference. In the year 2000, (St.) Pope John Paul (the Great) apologized on behalf of sins of Catholics, 2a. not on behalf of the Catholic Church— the Church that Christ founded, the Catholic (Universal) Church, is spotless because she is one with Christ and Christ is spotless. Anyway, in the apology of March 12, 2000, the Pope asked forgiveness 2b. on behalf of the Catholic Church for the sins of Catholics throughout history.
Our second respondent Mr. Smith invokes the Nazis, fascists and communists (what a surprise!) to downplay the atrocities committed by the Catholic Church. His answer is the usual display of ignorance (willful or not). But allowing for the many fallacies in his regurgitation of garbage, we could retort very easily with Mr. Gomes’ dishonest semantics:
1.
The Nazi-regime of Germany from 1933 to 1945 killed no one. People within Nazism killed people. Big difference. We already pointed out as well in “Christinsanity: cause of the Holocaust” that the vast majority of Nazis were Christians, a fact most Christians always seem to “forget”.
Fascism killed no one. People within fascism killed people. Big difference. Again, fascism was not limited to Germany. Fascist Italy: 94 % Catholic, 3 % other Christian denominations. Fascist Spain: almost exclusively Catholic. Fascist Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia: overwhelming Catholic majority countries.
Fascist movements in the USA from the 1930’s to 2021: exclusively Christian.
Communism killed no one. People within communism killed people. Big difference. Communist Poland from 1947 to 1989: majority Catholic population. Communist Cuba, from 1959 to present is a majority Christian country, including its long-time dictator Fidel Castro.
In the same way that Christian religions and their Buy-Bull are blatantly contradictory, Mr. Gomes follows suit with his own contradictory statement:
2.a. Pope John Paul apologized not on behalf of the Catholic Church but in his apology asked for forgiveness 2.b. on behalf of the Catholic Church…
The facts however fly in the face of these ignorant (or lying?) Catholics
On the morning of February 18, 1916 father Hans Schmidt was executed for the murder of his rectory’s housekeeper, Anna Aumüller. True to form, the church had already reassigned father Schmidt several times because of his “questionable behavior”.
On December 7, 2017 father John Bernard Feit was sentenced to life for the murder of Irene Garza in April 1960. Irene was raped before she was murdered. Feit had already confessed to the murder to two other priests in 1960, but the confessional secrecy prevented the latter two from exposing the murderer.
Danny Croteau was an altar boy who was not only raped by father Richard Lavigne, he was also killed by him. Being child rapists themselves, two bishops who covered up the rape of at least 40 children by Lavigne, also covered up the murder of Danny Croteau.
Father Gerald Robinson, at the time chaplain of Mercy Hospital in Toledo, Ohio, murdered sister Margaret Ann Pahl on April 5, 1980. He presided over her funeral 4 days later. Guess he wanted to make sure she was dead and buried.
Father Athanase Seromba killed 2,000 people in 1994 during the “100 days” Rwandan genocide. The Catholic Church helped him escape justice, change his identity and assigned him to a parish near Florence, Italy. In 2002 he was finally turned over to the UN War Crimes Prosecutor. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2008. The Vatican counts his victims among the "Christians persecuted for their faith", while conveniently "forgetting" it was a Catholic priest doing the killing.
Now, onto retort to Mr. Gomes’ dishonest answer and blatant denial of the facts: Catholic clergy members have been guilty of crimes individually, just like other human beings, but to assert that the Catholic Church as an institution is not responsible for the deaths of thousands of people is comparable to saying that the Nazi-regime was a good thing if it wasn’t for some of its members committing a few crimes. Although it is very tempting do so, we don’t have to look into the persecution of Arian Christians, the Albigensian crusade, the persecution of fraticelli and bogomils, the Crusades in general or the Inquisition. Neither will we discuss the Reformation and contra-Reformation Wars, the Thirty Years War (with this one alone responsible for 6 million deaths*) or the Eighty-Years War preceding and converging with it. The past century or so is already bad enough.
2. The Killer Church
The number of children killed by the Catholic Church in Canada between 1880 and 1996 is yet to be determined. The century long Canadian genocide was remarkable in the way that government, Catholic Church, Anglican Church, Methodist and other protestant denominations all found each other as partners in crime with one common goal: the complete eradication of the cultural identity of Canada’s indigenous savages. The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement has identified 139 schools so far where the murders took place, but that list is far from complete (i.e. it does not include provincial run schools or schools solely run by monastic orders outside of the joint churches and government program). Including schools not surveyed by the TRC the total number of concentration-extermination-and-assimilation camps is closer to 150. To compare with its southern neighbor, the US ran 350 such schools. The Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission states a total number of 3,201 reported deaths in all the residential schools surveyed, from 1867 to 2000. I can’t blame the commission for reporting only what they found, but nowhere does the summary report question this number for representing the reality. On 27 May 2021, 215 unmarked graves of children were found at the Kamloops residential school. A few weeks later, in June 2021, another 751 unmarked graves of children were found at the Marieval Indian Residential School, Saskatchewan. At the end of that same month, 182 unmarked graves of children aged 7 to 15 were located at St Eugene’s Mission School near Cranbrook, British Columbia. Three schools run by the Catholic Church, 1,148 unmarked graves. As time progresses, the numbers of victims need constant adjusting and it’s more than likely that the TRC’s report will turn out to be a massive understatement. Another number that pops-up in most of the media coverage of Canada’s well intended enlightenment program of savages is the 150,000 children that were forced into this system. But think of it: this would mean that on average for more than hundred years - even limited to - the 139 schools of the TRC - saw only 1,079 “students” rotating through their meat grinders or 9.3 “students per school per year.
As most of the stories of these re-education camps have primarily been focused on Canada, we could almost forget that there were three times as many of them in the US. The abuse and murders in these schools cannot be solely ascribed to the Catholic Church either, as they were set up in the same monster union manner as in Canada and Australia, with different Christian denominations eagerly participating in the forced conversions and all the collateral damage they were allowing thereto.
Similarly, the Magdalene Laundries, basically slave labor camps in Ireland and the UK were run by Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church. The scandals around these for-profit-prisons erupted when the Spitters on all Pretense of Christianity, pardon, Sisters of our Lady of Charity sold a part of their convent in Dublin to a real estate developer in 1993. The discovery of 155 unmarked graves, of which 75 were the anonymous reminders of undocumented deceased women and girls in the so-called “care” of these charitable capitalist nuns, was the spark that ignited another catastrophic blow to the Catholic Church’s authority and esteem in Ireland. Despite multiple requests since then, and while the dioceses were doing everything they could to save the sinking ship of religion in the once Catholic island, the religious orders running the asylums have refused to disclose their ledgers and registers. Their refusal to cooperate was backed by the UK and Irish government who blocked any serious investigation. Only after survivors of the torture camps filed their case with the UN Committee Against Torture, did the Irish government set up an investigative committee. The “McAleese-report”, released in 2013 found that 11,000 women were committed to the concentration camps, but found no evidence of abuse or maltreatment other than verbal abuse. The immediate reaction of Catholic clergy members was to describe the media coverage as an anti-Catholic smear campaign. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights in the US called the victims of abuse liars. I suppose this League is set up to protect the Civil Rights of Catholic killers, not their victims. Why does it seem like there's a pattern here? The Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, and Sisters of Charity, also refused to participate in the restitution fund set up by the Irish government for survivors. The Catholic killers and their cronies turned out to be blatant liars. While the Catholic Church was in full PR-mode denying everything, research by Catherine Corless and Anna Corrigan uncovered the mass grave of 796 children at a home run by the Sisters of Bon Secours in Tuam, Galway (the number is based on the -complete?- internal records of the Sisters of Bon Secours – the Catholic abortionist nuns who ran the place). Ages ranged from 36 foetal weeks (meaning that these babies were either aborted or miscarried) to three years old. The Sickies, whose motto is “Good Help to those in Need” certainly helped their own needs. Not only did they murder children and unborn babies, physically and sexually abuse women and girls, they were heavily involved in international human trafficking, selling babies born in their “Magdalene Laundry” to foreign adoption parents, and let’s be clear, they certainly did not always do so with the mothers’ permission. The Sickies of No Secours did not only operate from Ireland, their criminal web spans many countries. Either way, operating one “Home” from 1926 to 1961 and throwing 796 babies in a sceptic tank (2 per month) may lead one to think that they are not very forthcoming on the whole truth and nothing but the truth, even when sworn on the bible. Ninety five years after they first started abusing children and killing babies in Tuam, the Sisters of No Remorse finally issued an apology in 2021. Maybe they are in need of donations?
Though Ireland was the first to report on a large scale about these work prisons, the concept of these laundries originated in England (London) and was copied in Scotland, Wales, Canada, the US, Australia and Sweden. It is way early to determine how many children and young women would have been killed in these institutions by the nuns as investigations haven’t even seriously begun yet, but a careful estimate of non-accidental or non-natural deaths would put the number of victims since 1922 around 15,000, which I will further reduce by half to 7,500, even though the Catholic Church doesn't deserve any slack whatsoever.
Earlier on I mentioned father Athanase Serombe killing 2,000 people in 1994. He wasn’t a sole adventurer however. For more than 20 years, the Catholic Church ignored its involvement in the atrocities and the instrumental role it played in creating the conditions that culminated into the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Only in 2017 did the king of the Catholics recognize that “sins and failings of the church and its members” had “disfigured the face” of Catholicism”. It more than disfigured the face of his criminal conglomerate alright: more than 800,000 people killed in less than 5 months, another 500,000 mutilated and or raped and probably worst of all: thousands of survivors defecting from Catholicism to Protestant Christianity. Does the Vatican count the latter as “Christians persecuted for their faith” as well? Even though the pope asked for forgiveness, he only acknowledged that “some priests and nuns had succumbed to hatred and violence by participating in the genocide”. He did not mention that it was the Catholic Church that created the “apartheid”-system in Rwanda and for decades (since 1923) discriminated against Hutus. But when the power switched to the Hutu majority in the 1970’s, the Catholic Church switched sides and developed close relations with the new leaders.
“The CDI, as a good relay of the Catholic Church, had always been very close to the Habyarimana regime. By the fall of 1994 the church was doing some soul-searching and could write: ‘The Catholic Church has been in the service of General Habyarimana’s power. This is the accusation one constantly hears against the Rwandese church. And it is unfortunately true!’- from the Lettre des Missionaires d’Afrique, 12 september 1994.
The situation was as messy and the Church as divided as it was in the 1940’s, specifically when looking at the genocides undertaken by the Catholic Church in Croatia during WWII. In this case, the HRCC teamed up with the Ustaše. The political leader of Croatia wanted to get rid of its Eastern Orthodox Serbs by converting, deporting or killing them. It ended up being the third method for the most part and while most of the victims were Serbs, Jews, Roma, dissident Croats and Bosnian Muslims were also targeted. One of the most notorious examples of Catholic clergy acting on the policies of the Catholic Church was the camp commander of the third largest extermination camp in Second World War Europe: the Franciscan friar Tomislav Filipovic. He wasn’t the only one. Most of the Croatian Franciscans supported the regime and many of them took part in the killing, just as other Catholic priests did; all this with the blessing of bishops like Ivan Saric and sanctioned by the very ambiguous stance of pope Pius XII. To cut a very long story short: the Catholic Church was complicit and actively participated in the murder of more than 470,000 people. There are apparently no statistics on the religious affiliation of the 30,000 gypsies murdered, but it is clear that one of the principal reasons the 40,000 Jews and 400,000 Serbs were killed was because they were not Catholics. And just as it would do in 1994, the Catholic Church helped many of the war criminals escape, housing the Croatian war criminals in the Pontifical College of St. Jerome in Rome before helping many of them on their way to South-America.
The above examples so far establish that the Catholic Church is directly responsible for the murder of more than 1.3 million people between 1922 and 2022. At this point I’d like to come back to the mighty philosopher and theologian David Smith. Are these examples illustrations of the structures of the Catholic Church being hijacked by secular nobility or powerful monarchies? Is the bad reputation of the Catholic Church completely unmerited when its structures are directly involved in the mass murder of non-Catholics, or when the Vatican is helping war criminals change identity and escape to other countries, a practice that certainly was not limited to German Nazi officers or even WWII?
'Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer': a favorite slogan of fascists and the basis of "god's kingdom on earth". No wonder the Catholic Church and fascism have always been thick as thieves.
3. Killed by consequence
Very few people commit suicide because they are bored or want to try out something new in life. You don’t need a psychology degree to recognize that of the thousands of suicides every year, a number of them are a direct consequence of the sexual abuse suffered at one point in their life. Studies have shown that up to 45% of all adults who have been raped in their childhood have contemplated committing suicide more than once. One in three has attempted it at least once, and up to 5 % end up taking their own life.
Getting an exact figure on how many people have committed suicide as a direct result of being raped by Catholic clergy is tricky. But with more than 500,000 children raped by Catholic clergy in the past hundred years, it is not an exaggeration to state that more than 25,000 have killed themselves because of the trauma inflicted upon them by their kind and caring spirit guides. I can already hear the Catholic priests arguing that no one forced those victims to kill themselves. Conversely: no one forced any Catholic priest to rape a child either, or to force thousands of children into overcrowded concentration camps and starve or beat them to death.
The same debate could be waged about unassisted or clandestine abortions and the role of religion as a whole and the Catholic Church’s responsibility in this hotly debated societal issue. I’ll just refer briefly to the Philippines as an example, as it is one country where abortion is a crime regardless of the circumstances. There are no provisions that exempt abortion from being criminally liable in case of rape, incest or foetal impairment or even in cases where the life of the mother is at risk. As a result, hundreds of thousands of women in the Philippines resort to clandestine abortion every year, and more than a thousand die because of it. In South America it is twice this number. Admittedly, ascribing every such death to the Catholic Church would be a misrepresentation, but it definitely has a big hand in the stigma surrounding this issue. In the Philippines, it is not women who get to decide what happens to their bodies; these decisions belong to a club of old, sexually frustrated men who have sworn to never marry or have children to begin with. These hypocrites have and are still writing the laws of a country where church and state are only separated in name. The irony could not be any darker knowing that the Buy-Bull where this church bases its authority on is in no way opposed to abortion. But even without sticking our hands in this social hornet's nest, we can draw some clear conclusions.
4. A bleak statistic
Christian apologists, like our referenced examples, almost always point the finger at Nazi-Germany or Stalinist Russia, forgetting the three fingers pointing right back at them. Nazi-Germany, Nazi-Austria and fascist Italy, often coined as the Axis of Evil, where not merely Christian countries, they were close to being 100 % Christian. The National Social Christian Party in Quebec, Canada is but one example of many Nazi-parties that operated in the America's. Imagine how the indigenous population would have fared in a Canada ruled by the likes of these Christian racists. Why do Christians always "forget" to mention that Nazism, Fascism and similar 'isms' have been popular in as much, if not more, Christian countries as in non-Christian countries? Is it plain stupidity or downright deceit? Mr. Gomes pretends his beloved criminal organization is spotless, but if that is true, then what did the Führer of the HRCC apologize for on behalf of his Church? Maybe the 70 papal bulls demonizing Jews and calling for their enslavement and extermination? Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Pavelić would only have had to look at the Papal States of a few decennia earlier to learn how to exploit Jews and Gypsies. Or did the high priest of Rome apologize for the company policy of assigning child rapists to new hunting grounds whenever misguided parents started complaining about their children being raped?
We only had to give a few 20th century examples of the Catholic Church being directly responsible for the death of more than 1.3 million people and at least 300,000 indirectly. . As alluded to earlier, this number is likely to go up if more investigations would be allowed or can be undertaken in the cases of the so-called “assimilation schools” in the US, Canada or countries where these systems are still being kept quiet. Yet based on the above examples and applicable to the last hundred years alone,
the Catholic Church has been killing 43 people every day.
As sad as this average already is, and as much as Protestants may be smirking or shaking their head warily at the Catholic Church: don’t think we have forgotten about your cults, churches or cult leaders. After all, the Catholic Church wasn't fighting holy ghosts in the many religious wars of the last five centuries. Protestants were just as happy killing Catholics and when it came to killing, pardon, saving the souls of non-Christians, the sworn enemies could suddenly drop all hostilities and work together for the greater bad.
Mr. David Smith, theologian and mighty philosopher postulated that the many murders committed by the Catholic Church were a result of powerful monarchies hijacking the Catholic Church. Maybe he was referring to Pope Pius IX. We featured this despotic ruler and nobleman briefly in our previous posts on the Wholly Rotten Criminal Conglomerate as the revivor of the Peter's pence. Yet this worldly theocrat is also remembered for his strong condemnation of civil and human rights, democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of press, equality in the eyes of the law and enlightenment of humanity in general. His proclamation of the Immaculate Conception of Mary and the Infallibility of the Pope as dogmas are still part of the hypocrisy of Roman Catholicism, as well as his reiteration that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. Pope Pius' views and attempts to cling to worldly rule are a perfect example of the HRCC's primary concern: power. If maintaining that power means the death of a few million people, we have to ascribe that to our own flawed and limited understanding of the greater good god has in store when his one true church rapes and kills thousands upon thousands of sinful victims, both Christians and pagans. The Catholic Church preaches many things. What it does is something entirely different.
Richard Dalet PHD, 18 January 2022
Note
If you have in any way fallen victim to abuse, of any kind, anywhere or by anyone, we hope that the below linked organization may be a source of help to you: Helping Survivors - helpingsurvivors.org/
Sexual Assault in the Workplace - helpingsurvivors.org/workplace-sexual-assault/
Sources and references
Linda Bordoni, “13 Christians killed every day in the world because of their faith”, 13 January 2021, https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2021-01/report-open-doors-christians-persecuted.html
G. Hovey, “Abortion: a history”, PubMed, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, PMID 12340403, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12340403/
Sophie Arie, “Historians say Inquisition wasn't that bad”, 16 June 2004, The Guardian – World News, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/16/artsandhumanities.internationaleducationnews
Ruth Alexander, "Are there really 100,000 new Christian martyrs every year?", 12 November 2013, BBC News, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24864587 "The number comes originally from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the US state of Massachusetts, which publishes such a figure each year in its Status of Global Mission (see line 28)." In the same article , the director of the CSGC Todd Johnson admits that their numbers are pure fabrication, with the truth being less important than the perpetuation of the "persecuted Christian myth": 'And ultimately I think making that point is more important than being precise about the death toll.' - Todd Johnson.
1. Killed by Catholics
Wikipedia, “Hans Schmidt (priest)”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Schmidt_(priest)#cite_note-7
Wikipedia, “Murder of Irene Garza”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Irene_Garza
Wikipedia, “Richard R. Lavigne’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_R._Lavigne
Wikipedia, “Murder of Margaret Ann Pahl”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Margaret_Ann_Pahl
Wikipedia, “Athanase Seromba”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanase_Seromba
Wikipedia, "Thirty Years' War", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War Based on its sources Wikipedia gives a lower end estimate of 4.5 and a higher end estimate of 8 million victims of the Thirty Years War. By contrast, for the Eighty Years War it states a number of casualties of 100,000 but the latter is only the number of soldiers killed during battle.
2. The Killer Church
Government of Canada – Gouvernement du Canada, “Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement”, https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100015576/1571581687074 Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2015 https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf
Levi Rickert, “Remembering the 215 Indigenous Children Found in Unmarked Graves at Canadian Residential School”, 31 May 2021, Native News Online, https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/remembering-the-remains-of-215-indigenous-children-at-first-nations-residential-school
BBC, “Canada: 751 unmarked graves found at residential school”, 24 June 2021, BBC News – World > US & Canada, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57592243
Nora McGreevy, “751 Unmarked Graves Discovered Near Former Indigenous School in Canada”, 28 June 2021, Smithsonian Magazine, Smart News, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/751-unmarked-graves-discovered-near-former-indigenous-school-canada-180978064/
Matt Hadro, “After 751 Unmarked Graves Found at Former Residential School, Saskatchewan Bishops Call for Justice”, 25 June 2021, National Catholic Register, https://www.ncregister.com/cna/after-751-unmarked-graves-found-at-former-residential-school-saskatchewan-bishops-call-for-justice?
Al Jazeera, “Canada: 182 unmarked graves found at another residential school”, 30 June 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/30/canada-182-unmarked-graves-found-at-another-residential-school
Dr. Paula Murphy, University College Dublin, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment”, review no 707, Reviews in history, reviewed book: Smith, James M, Irelands Magdalen Laundries and the Nations Architecture of Confinement, Manchester University p Press, 2007 https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/707 accessed 31 December 2021
Wikipedia, “Bon Secours Sisters”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Sisters
Wikipedia, “Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Mother_and_Baby_Home#Final_report
Cahir O’Doherty, “Mass grave of up to 800 dead babies exposed in County Galway”, 26 May 2014, Irish Central, Opinion, https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/cahirodoherty/mass-grave-of-up-to-800-dead-babies-exposed-in-county-galway
Erin Blakemore, “How Ireland Turned 'Fallen Women' Into Slaves”, 12 March 2018, updated:21 July 2019, History.com > Stories, https://www.history.com/news/magdalene-laundry-ireland-asylum-abuse,
Harriet Sherwood, “Pope Francis asks for forgiveness for church's role in Rwanda genocide”, 20 March 2017, the Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/20/pope-francis-asks-for-forgiveness-for-churchs-role-in-rwanda-genocide
Mary M. Fertitta, “When Priests Forgot About God: An Analysis of the Catholic Church's Role in Genocide”, Kennesaw State University, Abstract, the Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research Volume 7, issue 1, article 4, https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1202&context=kjur
Wikipedia, “Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_clergy_involvement_with_the_Usta%C5%A1e
Mary Kate Luft, “10 facts about the Ustase genocide”, 09 November 2017,The Borgen project https://borgenproject.org/facts-about-the-ustase-genocide/
3. Killed by consequence
A. Plunkett , B. O'Toole, H Swanston, R. K. Oates, S. Shrimpton, P. Parkinson, “Suicide risk following child sexual abuse”, September-October 2001, Ambul Pediatr. PMID 11888413, PubMed.gov, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11888413/
Megan Asmussen, “The Effects of Trauma: How Sexual assault and Suicide are Connected”, posted by Shannon Webster, 11 December 2020, Victim Service Center central Florida, https://www.victimservicecenter.org/the-effects-of-trauma-how-sexual-assault-and-suicide-are-connected/
University of Manchester, “Child abuse linked to risk of suicide in later life”, 09 January 2019, Science Daily, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190109192533.htm
RAINN, “Victims of Sexual Violence: Statistics”, https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence
Robert Kappe, “The Effect of the Religious Environment on Teenage Birth - Rates in the USA”, School of Public Policy University College London, London, UK https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1482144/3/Kappe_SRSP_revised04_forOpenAccess.pdf
F. Kissling, “Religion and abortion: Roman Catholicism lost in the pelvic zone”, 1993, NIH National Library for Medecine / National Center for Biotechnological Information, PMID 8274867, PubMed.gov, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8274867/
Lawrence B. Finer and Rubina Hussain, “Unintended Pregnancy and Unsafe Abortion in the Philippines: Context and Consequences”, In Brief, New York: Guttmacher Institute, 2013, No. 3, https://www.guttmacher.org/report/unintended-pregnancy-and-unsafe-abortion-philippines-context-and-consequences
Wikipedia, “Abortion in the Philippines”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_Philippines
Mariana Romero, Rodolfo Gomez Ponce de Leon, Luiz Francisco Baccaro, Berenise Carroli, Hedieh Mehrtash, Jimena Randolino, Elisa Menjivar, Erika Estevez Saint-Hilaire, Maria del Pilar Huatuco, Rosalinda Hernandez Muñoz, Gabriela Garcia Camacho, Soe Soe Thwin, Liana Campodonico, Edgardo Abalos, Daniel Giordano, Hugo Gamerro, Caron Rahn Kim, Bela Ganatra, Metin Gülmezoglu, Özge Tuncalp, Guillermo Carroli, “Abortion-related morbidity in six Latin American and Caribbean countries: findings of the WHO/HRP multi-country survey on abortion”, BMJ Global Health, BMJ Journals Volume 6 Issue 8,, https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/8/e005618
Nancy Northup, president & CEO Center for Reproductive Right, Michael Shifter, president Inter-American Dialogue, “Abortion and Reproductive Rights in Latin America: implications for democracy”, March 2015, https://www.reproductiverights.org/sites/crr.civicactions.net/files/documents/IAD9794%20Repro%20Rights_web.pdf, : “An estimated 2,000 Latin American women die every year from unsafe abortions.”
4. A bleak statistic
List of papal bulls on the “Jewish question”, https://zionism-israel.com/hdoc/Papal_Bulls_Jews.htm
Primary texts on history of relations, Dialogika Resources, Pope Paul VI, “Cum Nibis Absurdum”, 14 July 1455, published online 21 December 2008, Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian relations https://www.ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/primary-texts-from-the-history-of-the-relationship/paul-iv
Wikipedia, "Pope Pius IX", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_IX
Images
Former Catholic priest Richard Lavigne FILE PHOTO, from: Dusty Christensen, “Hampden DA: Former priest killed boy, 13, nearly 50 years ago”, 24 May 2021, Daily Hampshire Gazette, https://www.gazettenet.com/Hampden-DA-Anthony-Gulluni-Danny-Croteau-Catholic-priest-Richard-Lavigne-40618528
“Catholic prelates lead by Aloysius Stepinac at the funeral of Marko Došen, one of the senior Ustaše leaders, in September 1944”, WikiCommons, By Unknown author - http://bejiita.xanga.com/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9503837 retrieved from Wikipedia, “Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_clergy_involvement_with_the_Usta%C5%A1 Consulted on 05 January 2022
Full referenced answers on the question "How many people were killed by the Catholic Church?", Google top result: https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-has-the-Catholic-Church-killed, as consulted on December 27, 2021 and January 13, 2022:
, The search for truth led to my becoming a committed Catholic
The answer is zero. The Catholic Church has killed no one. People within the Catholic Church have killed people. Big difference. In the year 2000, (St.) Pope John Paul (the Great) apologized on behalf of sins of Catholics, not on behalf of the Catholic Church— the Church that Christ founded, the Catholic (Universal) Church, is spotless because she is one with Christ and Christ is spotless.
Anyway, in the apology of March 12, 2000, the Pope asked forgiveness on behalf of the Catholic Church for the sins of Catholics throughout history. This gesture actually convinced me of the Truth of Catholicism, of Christianity, because as far as I saw, there was no religion on earth with the humility of leaders willing to carry out such a public apology. God himself is humble, it makes sense that his institution is humble insofar as that is understood to be a spiritual entity (for lack of a better word) to which sinners belong.
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, Mighty Philosopher
I’m sure the Catholic Church has been responsible for killing some people. But when you look back at the twentieth century for example, only an idiot would fail to see that the VAST majority of the carnage was perpetrated by secular groups such as the Nazis, Fascists, Communists etc. The church has not come close in its entire history to these numbers. In addition, many of the atrocities committed in the Middle Ages during periods like the Crusades occurred when the structure of the Catholic Church was hijacked by the secular nobility and various power hungry monarchies at the time.
You will also occasionally hear some people fantasizing about the Church authorizing nuns who had become pregnant by lecherous priests, to abort babies etc. Most of those stories are complete BS. More than any other denomination the Catholic Church has consistently condemned abortion and even contraception. Of course that doesn’t mean that there were not evil individuals engaging in some practices like this, but certainly NOT with any approval from the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church also gets a bad reputation regarding how it behaved in the Second World War with the Nazis, but again most of those stories are fantasies. Read the book “The Devil’s Diary” about the man, Alfred Rosenberg, responsible for creating the entire Nazi/Aryan philosophy at the time of Hitler. He expressed a complete fury at the Catholic Church because it refused to respond to the threats that Hitler leveled at it, and played a large part in setting up a variety of escape routes for Jews out of Nazi hands. It just decided that its role was better served staying behind the scenes and not getting into any head on argument with Nazis.
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