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Letter #19, 2019: Bannon's Italian Monastery[2019-04-26][Engleză]Thursday, April 25, 2019He is the smartest guy in Rome. Hes always a tough guy. He comes across as a monk, but hes actually a very tough guy. American businessman and political strategist Steve Bannon, on British Catholic political activist Benjamin Harnwell, head of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute in Rome. The Institute has received permission from Italian authorities to take over a nearly abandoned 1,000-year-old Carthusian monastery in the town of Trisulti, about 100 miles south of Rome, and to the consternation of many turn it into a center for a conservative political and cultural movement in Europe. Bannon, formerly a top advisor to US President Donald Trump, is helping to publicize and support the monastery project. Critics of the initiative say it aims to "destroy Europe" by stressing "national identity" over against the idea of a "united Europe" Trisulti will be the home of a number of projects that underscore the fact that man is made in the image and likeness of God, and that recognition of the imago Dei is the cornerstone of the Judaeo-Christian foundations of Western Civilization." Benjamin Harnwell ========== Summary Note: A controversial project in central Italy involving Steve Bannon, formerly a close advisor of US President Donald Trump, aims to restore a nearly abandoned Carthusian monastery and to make it the center of a political and cultural movement in Europe. The project attracted considerable attention in recent months, most recently in a bitterly negative opinion piece in the Israeli journal, Haaretz, on April 22, three days ago. This Haaretz article moved me to gather the material for this email. The general effect of the coverage by many media outlets has been to raise the profile of the project to a global level even before its actual launch. There are many obstacles to transforming a medieval monastery into a modern school or cultural center, including lighting, toilets and showers, and the project's leaders have said that these issues have not yet been fully assessed or solved. The Letter below attempts to give a sampling, a "Dossier," on the coverage of this project over the past two years in an effort to provide background material for readers. The monastery of Trisulti in collepardo, near Frosinone, in central Italy south of Rome. It was consecrated in 1211, more than 800 years ago The history of the monastery Trisulti Charterhouse (Italian: Certosa di Trisulti) is a former Carthusian monastery or charterhouse, in Collepardo, province of Frosinone, central Italy. It is located on the slopes of Monte Rotonaria, a peak of the Monti Ernici, at 825 meters above the sea level. It was consecrated in 1211, becoming a national monument in 1873. In 1947, the monastery was taken over by the Cistercian Congregation of Casamari Abbey and continues as a Cistercian monastery. However, in recent years only two elderly monks have been living at the monastery. A first Benedictine abbey was founded in the site in 996 by St. Dominic Abbot, not far from the current building, which was erected starting in 1204 by order of Pope Innocent III, who assigned it to the Carthusians. The abbey church, dedicated to St. Bartholomew, was consecrated in 1211. The name Trisulti may derive from Latin tres saltibus, meaning "at the three jumps": this was the name of a castle of the baronial Colonna family which commanded the three passes ("jumps") leading to Abruzzo, Rome and Ciociaria. The former White House Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, announced in 2018 plans to establish an academy in the charterhouse. (continued below) JOIN DR. ROBERT MOYNIHAN FOR AN EXTRAORDINARY PILGRIMAGE IN IRELAND IN AUGUST... CLICK HERE +1.202.536.4555 +1.202.536.4555 Dossier: Six Articles Below are six articles which contain information and judgments about the Trisulti project. Together, they may provide a useful dossier of background information to begin to understand and assess the project. (1) Introductory material from the Trisulti project website, February 14, 2018 (2) Article from Haaretz, April 22, 2019 (3) Article from Reuters, September 18, 2018 (4) Article from the Daily Beast, June 20, 2018 (5) Article from CBS News, September 7, 2017 (6) Article from Crux, February 13, 2017 Six articles on the Trisulti project (1) Introductory material from the project website (link) Rome, 14 February 2018 (Ash Wednesday) The Dignitatis Humanae Institute today signed a pioneering accord with the Italian Ministry for Culture to become the official Leaseholder of the historic Abbey of Trisulti, National Monument of Italy since 1873. The original abbey, whose ruins still stand nearby, was founded by St. Dominic of Foligno in AD 987. Pope Innocent III ordered the current structure built in 1204 in honour of the Virgin Mary, whose first of numerous apparitions at the grotto beneath Trisulti was to a pious ascetic hermit sometime in the first half of the Sixth Century. This apparition was well-noted at the time because it was accompanied by two miraculous signs an imagine of the Madonna in a stalactite (of which only the face remains conserved), and a spring of water which still runs to this day. Innocents strong devotion to this apparition long preceded his election as Pope, and his papal summer palace is the building that today houses the National Library of Trisulti, which contains some 38,000 volumes and 35,000 ecclesiastical documents. Pope Innocent paid for the construction of the abbey from both his own pocket and Vatican funds, and he personally consecrated the new monastery in 1211. Trisulti, which was then part of the Papal States, was also under the protection of the Holy Roman Emperor from the time of Frederic II onwards. Bulls of Innocent and Frederic (as well as of Pope Boniface VIII) are conserved in the Library. The abbey itself is situated 50 miles south-east of Rome in the Apennine mountains, at 850 metres above sea-level, surrounded by thousands of acres of protected centuries-old oak forest. Presiding Abbot of the Cistercian Congregation of Casamari, Dom Eugenio Romagnuolo O.Cist. of the outgoing community is an active member of the DHIs Board of Trustees, thus ensuring continuity with the past as Trisulti goes forward into the future under its new leadership. H.E. Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, Honorary President of the DHI, said: I would like to thank Caterina Bon Valsassina and her colleagues on the Adjudicating Commission at the Ministry for Culture for their competence and diligence with which they have performed their difficult task, and we are proud and honoured to have been selected. I would also like to thank Minister Dario Franceschini for his pioneering policy of cooperation between the Ministry and private institutions for the greater promotion of the common good. DHI Board Member Mgr. Roberto de Odorico added: I warmly look forward in the years ahead to the DHIs working closely with the competent authorities to ensure the preservation of this historic patrimony of Italy and indeed of the whole world. DHI Board Member Abbot Eugenio Romagnuolo said: I am truly delighted that after many years of planning and preparation, the DHI is embarking on this exciting new chapter in its development. The DHI has a massive plan of renewal and regeneration for Trisulti, whose monastic history goes back a thousand years. Benjamin Harnwell, President of the Board of Trustees, said: Trisulti will be the home of a number of projects that underscore the fact that man is made in the image and likeness of God, and that the recognition of the imago Dei is the cornerstone of the Judaeo-Christian foundations of Western Civilisation. We are praying for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary whose connection to Trisulti goes back one and a half thousand years over this new chapter in our mission as we go forward. ========== (2) Opinion article from Haaretz, April 22, 2019 (link) Haaretz Opinion Steve Bannon's Fascist Far Right Christian Army Is Marching on Liberal Europe and on the Pope Bannon thinks he's Europe's savior. He's also a narcissist, spinmeister and provocateur. But we shouldn't dismiss his coalition-building efforts to radicalize Europe, empower the far right and declare holy war on the Vatican By Alexander Reid Ross April 22, 2019 Steve Bannon is trying to take his far right populist provocations to victory in Europe's ballot boxes and to win Europeans' souls. Hard right, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-abortion, Christian traditionalist souls susceptible to cheap anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim dogwhistles, that is. Derided by Trump and alienated from sectors of his party, Bannon will likely never again serve as a public face of Republican strategy, but has instead become an eminence gris whose influence many will conveniently disavow. Regardless, he is pushing his Trump-style nationalist and race-baiting victory strategy to its next logical battlefield. Bannon has called the Christian right a fundamental "layer" in Trumpism, and has worked to develop an international system through which the religious right can gain hegemony. Five years ago, he laced his comments to a group of reactionary Catholics in the Vatican with references to known fascists, and spoke in apocalyptic terms. He called on "the Church militant" to "fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that's starting that will literally eradicate everything that we've been bequeathed over the last 2,000 and 2,500 years." He spelled out the necessity of a global far right Christian coalition against the evils of socialism, atheism and Islam: "We are at the very beginning stages of a global conflict. If we do not bind together as partners, with others in other countries...[then] this conflict is only going to metastasize." Last month, the same coterie convened in Verona for the World Congress of Families to rally a global movement against LGBQTI rights, abortion, and immigration. Tellingly, their meeting included members of the fascist Forza Nuova party, which also marched in support in the streets outside of the meeting. Bannon's "vision" requires not only attacking the democratic systems of nation-states in Europe and but also transnational power centers that show insufficient commitment to hard right values, such as shutting Europe's doors to immigration including the Pope. In a 2016 meeting with Italy's now deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, Bannon reportedly opined that "the pope is a sort of enemy. [Bannon] suggested for sure to attack, frontally." After that meeting Salvini was photographed holding up a T-shirt emblazoned with the words: "Benedict [the former arch-traditionalist pope] is my pope." Bannon's seeding this far-right insurrection against the papacy by allying with Francis critics both within Catholicism and outside, building effectively a cross-denominational Christian traditionalist front. And he might be winning. One of the trustees of his institute is an outspoken critic of the current Pope and ex-Breitbart contributor, Austin Ruse, who's also an official of the World Congress of Families, the coalition of far-right, anti-gay Christian groups meeting in Verona that is backed by Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian ultra-nationalist oligarch close to Vladimir Putin. The Bannon anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim agenda has strong backing from within the Vatican, not least in the person of Robert Sarah, an African cardinal who's a traditionalist favorite to succeed Pope Francis. His rhetoric in 2019 almost precisely tracks the language Bannon employed in his own speech at the Vatican in 2014. He (Cardinal Sarah) told a French paper recently: "If the West continues in this fatal way, [accepting mass immigration] there is a great risk that, due to a lack of birth, it will disappear, invaded by foreigners, just as Rome has been invaded by barbarians This current desire to globalize the world by suppressing nations, specificities, is pure madness If Europe disappears, and with it the invaluable [Christian] values of the old continent, Islam will invade the world." It seems that Pope Francis may already be feeling the anti-immigrant heat. In his Easter message, he unexpectedly called for the international community to return refugees to Syria. In tandem, Bannon is deepening his political efforts, which he calls The Movement, to swing Europe to the right, with one test being the upcoming EU elections. For Bannon, organizing populist parties is "no different from Goldman Sachs" or when he started his own financial services firm "its just a different conference room." That's the story, at least, that he fed Alison Klayman in her documentary The Brink, which followed Bannon from the aftermath of the disastrous 2017 alt-right protest in Charlottesville to the beginning of 2019. The Brink sheds light on a strategy of collaboration across the far right that, by Bannons own admission, openly exploits anger and resentment. While identified as "populism" for its emotive appeals, Bannons strategy is forged in expensive hotels, in conversations with former Goldman Sachs head John Thornton, on private jets, and in the mansions of billionaires. The guestlists for his exclusive dinners include members of Vlaams Belang, a repackaged version of the Flemish fascist party Vlaams Blok, and the most extreme elements of the far-right Sweden Democrats. While Bannons proximity to far-right parties like the rebranded French Front National, now known as the National Rally, and Italys League indicate an identification with ostensibly non-fascist parties, his travels among the ranks of fascists indicate that his "populist" strategy involves incorporation of a vanguardist approach that deploys fascism for particular purposes. Bannon's long-time ally, the UK's Nigel Farage, may be, after Salvini, the clearest beneficiary of Bannonism. Farage, once head of the pro-Brexit and virulently anti-EU and anti-immigrant UKIP party, has founded a new Brexit Party in advance of the EU elections. Bannon was a key figure in dark-money funding and messaging the anti-EU Brexit campaign that Farage spearheaded, a role that Farage himself openly acknowledged and that is documented in a scene in The Brink between the two. It's easy to turn a blind eye to fascism, even when it is right under your nose. Nigel Farage in conversation about funding and forming an international movement with Donald Trump's white supremacist former adviser, Steve Bannon. Chilling #everydayfascism Farage for his part isn't shy about paying Bannon back: He's called him the "greatest political thinker and activist in the Western world today." Bannon is seen offering tangible support to groups like the Sweden Democrats and Belgium's Vlaams Belang, reassuring them that "we do actually control the government." Later in the film, a figure from the Marine Le Pen-led National Rally insists that Bannon is "quite discrete in the way he helps. I have these tools, you want them [or] dont want them." The National Rally just announced it had formally joined a new pre-EU elections alliance of far-right forces in Europe spearheaded by Italy's Salvini, to which Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far right party with neo-National Socialist links, and Austria's Freedom Party, which has National Socialist roots. How does Bannon intend to widen the circle of provocateurs, entryists and far-right activists who are au fait with those tools and how to use them? One way is Bannon's establishment of what he terms the "Academy for the Judeo-Christian West" in an old Italian monastery he intends to repurpose as a "gladiator school for culture warriors." As he commented on its curriculum: "Will we teach the underpinnings of populism and nationalism? Yeah, absolutely. But also a broader range of stuff. The trends of where we think the world is going." Steve Bannon, former WH Advisor, has leased a monastery in Italy for 20 years where he plans to create Christian Nationalist Training Camp for "Christian Warriors" to fight against other religions including Islam and Judaism. Not a book. Real life. It is difficult of course to gauge the extent to which Bannon and his populists have aided the rise of the international far right. He's hardly the only American right-winger so deeply committed to their resurgence. As the World Congress of Families convened in Verona, Open Democracy released an expose showing millions of dollars flowing from U.S. evangelicals to European right-wing religious groups connected to populist radical right parties over the years. Stateside, his name seems to be achieving diminishing returns: his assistance to Republican contenders during the mid-term elections went bust. The trans-Atlantic movement Bannon now represents, no matter how awkwardly or how much as a result of his own PR, dovetails globally with other right-wing populists, especially those who benefit from crucial support from right-wing evangelicals. Brazils new president Jair Bolsonaros son was photographed with Bannon during the election campaign that ushered his father into power, and his foreign minister Ernesto Araújo wrote an extensive tract citing Bannon and Russian fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin as important geopolitical reference points in the "multipolar world." Araújo has since glorified the "authentic national sentiment" of the Nazi Party. In The Brink, Bannon makes scattered references to a "global revolt" that will stitch together the "guys in Egypt," Modis people in India, and Orban in Hungary. He posits a China-Iran-Turkey axis as a rising global power, and hopes to thwart Chinese hegemony with the support of billionaire fugitive Guo Wengui. The name conspicuously absent from the film is Vladimir Putin, whose role in shaping the world-system that Bannon hopes to achieve and would be its principal beneficiary remains critical. Given recent indicators, such as the far-rights performance in elections from Belgium to Finland and the Popes Easter declaration, Bannons dream of "defeating the EU" by Europeans voting to destroy it and plunge the continent further into illiberal democracy may come to fruition sooner than even he dreamed possible, irrespective of his own efforts. Bannon is a mass of contradictions, a self-marketeer supreme and narcissist whose grandiose visions are often mirages or spin. He is a counter-revolutionary who considers himself a constituent part of a new French Revolution, a Catholic who targets the Pope, a purported populist who believes nothing can be accomplished without control over the governments appropriations process, and a widely detested figure who believes he has his finger on the pulse of the "zeitgeist." Sursa: www.InSideTheVatican.com Contor Accesări: 1116, Ultimul acces: 2026-08-01 19:14:16
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