In fact, there are several reasons why not to even talk about the appeal. The prominent one is that the International Criminal Court will not incriminate the Pope nor anyone of the cardinals. The guilt of a crime is personal, and the definition does not include the resistance to the idea of being subject in the laws of other governmental authorities. This is the reason why Cuno Tafusser, one of the judges of the International Criminal Court, said that «the path to incriminate  Vatican officials is a very narrow one».

Actually, the lawyers that appealed to the International Court knew very well that their request would remain unattended. But Snap and Ccr seem to believe that something will change after their appeal: they filled a 20 thousand pages dossier, outlining clergy abuses all over the world. By appealing to the International Criminal Court, they carried out the idea of Jeff Anderson, the Minnesota lawyer who’s made a career of suing the Vatican over its handling of clergy sex abuses cases. His first case involving the Catholic Church involved Father Thomas Adamson, a Minnesota priest who was accused of molesting several boys in the 1970s and 80s: it was 1983, almost two decades before the sex abuse crisis would erupt in Boston. Since that first case, Anderson has represented thousands of victims across the country, including creditors in several Church bankrupies. He has never agreed to a confidentiality close. And he never discussed for a compensation, except to say that contingencies range from 25 per cent to 40 per cent of judgements. Anderson’s firm – Jeff Anderson and Associates, which employs four other lawyers – has filed hundreds of sex abuse suits against the church. Though he will not disclose how much he has won in settlements, Anderson is thought to be responsible for a good chunk of the roughly $2.5 billion that, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the U.S. Catholic Church has paid to sex abuse victims to date. He was among the lawyers representing abuse victims in the $600 million settlement with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2007, the church’s largest payout ever. Actually, suing the Catholic Church is a very lucrative business, despiting what Anderson says. «It is not for money», he once declared to Associated Press.

Actually, Anderson know how to work to give their sues the most exposure he can. Anderson was the one who turned the Us Supreme Court the request for the testimony of the Pope in the case John Doe vs. Holy See. Can the Pope, the cardinals, the high representants of the Holy See be called to testify in a trial or be incriminated? Us Supreme Court declined to take the case. Anderson and his supporters proclaimed their victory. In fact, the Court did not take the case because of a juridical evaluation: according to the Act of State doctrine Joseph Ratzinger could not be accused nor called to testimony, because – at the time of the facts – he was acting as a Vatican minister, and no one can be judged for an Act of State. By not taking the case, the Court just letted know that there was no reason nor convenience to make an official pronouncement, since the trial would not eventually be carried out.

The International Criminal Court will probably take a similar decision. Yet the appeal had a huge international interest. And this brought great exposure to Snap and Ccr.  Snap is a non profit association, and it raises via direct mail, telemarketing, special events and Internet appeals something like 600 thousands dollar a year. But the majority of the earning comes from the percentage of the compensations got by suing archdiocese, the Vatican and so on. This is the mechanism: the Snap bring the victim to the lawyer, and they share what they get from the compensation. The Bbb, a rating agency that filled the Standards for Charity Accountability, did not even consider Snap a charity, because it «does not approve the organization budget, has not an approved conflict of interest policy, has not a voting member of the board who is assigned the responsabilità of serving as a the treasurer». In a word, there no way to understand where does the Snap gets money and how it manage it.

More. Some of the victims – for example Michael Baumann and Key Ebeling – abandoned the association. Steve Taylor, one of the most prominent contributors of Snap, had been arrested in 2008 because for attemted possession of more than one hundred child pornographic pictures. Barbara Blaine, the president of the Snap, wrote several letters to defend Taylor, asking the judges to turn a blind eye and focus on the work Taylor had precedently done.

Ccr – on the other hand – is a very active and rich associations. More than 1050 foundations – among the ones the Ford Foundation and the billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute – give grants for about 6 million and 200 thousand dollars. It also gets about 370 thousand dollars from Court Awards and attorney fees. Ccr had been founded in the 60s from leftist radicals  like Arthur Kinoy and William Kunstler, and took the defense of the member of the Us terroristic organization Black Panther. Most of their activity dealt with Middle East issues (they are known as wild anti-zionists), but now they decided to make a run on the lucrative case of the clergy abuses.

The roots of the success of San Raffaele hospital date back to 80s, when the Italian health system was going to structure to a web of both public and private medical centers. This system was congenial for State subsidizations delivered to private medical centers. The San Raffaele gained the reputation of a Center of Scientific Research specialized in diabetes and metabolic illnesses. The pride of San Raffaele research center, the care strategy for the Ada-Scid.

San Raffaele is not just an hospital. It is also a university. And in the connected Università Vita-Salute, dedicated to humanistic studies, philosophy, theology and scientific subjects are taught by professors who are in glaring contrast with the Catholic vision, from Emanuele Severino to Massimo Cacciari, from Roberta De Monticelli to Vito Mancuso, from Edoardo Boncinelli to Luca Cavalli-Sforza.

And San Raffaele also affords a considerable spending, wanted by fr. Verzé and managed from the Sigilli (the Signets) – this is how fr. Verzé called its cooperators totally devoted to the hospital. The archangel in fiberglass and inox steel cost 2.5 million euro. The glass dome cost 50 million. Under the dome, the university and the molecular medicine laboratories. Built on the dome, the archangel.

The numbers give the idea of how San Raffaele could raise almost 1 billion euro debt, and was led to the brink of bankrupcy. In recent months various ideas on how to rescue it were advanced. But these were withdrawn with the proposal, at the end of June, from Bertone and the IOR, the Institute of Works of Religion, the Vatican bank.
The IOR said that it was ready to provide 200 million euros immediately, while one billion over 3-5 years would be guaranteed by an international “charity” still shrouded in mystery (the financier George Soros has denied being part of the deal).
In exchange, Cardinal Bertone has demanded seats on the administrative board of the Mount Tabor Foundation, which governs the entire complex, of four of his proteges: Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, president of the IOR, Giuseppe Profiti, president of the Bambino Gesù hospital, Giovanni Maria Flick, an aspiring president  of the Toniolo Institute, and the Genoese industrialist Vittorio Malacalza.

Bertone – rumors from the Curia say – did not want to say ‘no’ to the S.O.S. of a Catholic institution. Rumors out of the Curia malign that Bertone suddenly got the occasion to take the control of the San Raffaele in order to create in Italy a Catholic hub of excellence in the field of health. By uniting under the control and leadership of the Vatican three cutting-edge hospitals: the Bambino Gesù, the Gemelli, and the San Raffaele.

Until now, the Holy See did not pay out anything. The Holy See commitment for a capital depends on a test of accountings and balances of the societies linked to San Raffaele. There is the need to be on to the situation.

In this context, Mario Cal, the fr. Verzé number 2, committed suicide. No man of the new board of the administration met him the last 15^th of July to formalize the hand over. It is told that Cal was just requested – via note – to leave the office. Cal was not going to be out of the scene: he had been already charged  – for the next three years – to manage the foreign societies linked to fr. Verzé. Just before committing suicide, Cal left a letter to his wife. “I payback the mistakes I did not”. No reference to which mistakes he was talking about.

In fact, the idea of a Catholic hub of excellence in the health field seem still far from Bertone’s plans. The Secretary of State has a more urgent need: to be ahead of the earthquake began with his coming to Secretariat of State. Many, in the Roman Curia, fell that their influence was getting weaker, and their power was going to disappear. «Bertone still did not understand he cannot trust anybody», says an official of the Roman Curia. The secretary of State was twice betrayed: by card. Angelo Bagnasco – Bertone sponsored him to lead the Italian Episcopal Conference – that still want to keep his own relationships with the policy, without referring to the Secretariat of State; and by the Roman Curia, very attentive to show and underline Bertone’s mistakes. Bertone often clumsily react to the attacks. For example, it clumsily attempted to take the control of the Toniolo institute before the arrival in Milan of the new archbishop Angelo Scola.

Toniolo Institute is a key character of this story Taking the control of the Institute means to put the hands on the Catholic culture in Italy. It is not a case that – after the board of Toniolo Institute changed in 2002, and passed under the control of the Italian Episcopal Conference, headed at the time by cardinal Camillo Ruini – a number of defamatory statements against Cicchetti, Ornaghi, and Boffo were sent anonymously to cardinals, bishops, civil authorities, journalists. One of these statements brought, in September 2009, to the resignment of Dino Boffo, then director of Avvenire, the news daily of Italian Episcopal Conference.

In 2010, Bertone’s offensive against the Toniolo developed in three letters addressed to Cardinal Tettamanzi and leaked to the press, signed by Professor Alberto Crespi, former dean of the faculty of law at the Catholic University. The letter accused the Toniolo of “bad management,” and among other things complained that it had been co-opted by Boffo instead of Professor Giovanni Maria Flick, a former president of the constitutional court and one of Cardinal Bertone’s trusted man.

Last February 18, the secretary of state himself wrote to Cardinal Tettamanzi to reiterate his criticisms of him and ask him to resign from the presidency of the Toniolo, to let Flick take his place and to speed up the replacement of three other board members. All of this on the tightest of schedules, before the replacement of the archbishop of Milan, expected at the end of June.
Tettamanzi – president of Toniolo Institute – resists, rebuts the accusations of bad managements, is received from the Pope in an audience. He keeps is seat of number one of Toniolo Institute. But Bertone is not giving up, and is again asking Tettamanzi to step aside, in the name of a necessary and urgent “renewal” that would also include the rewriting of the statutes of the Toniolo and of the Catholic University itself, with the attribution to the Vatican of supervisory powers that it does not have today. Even this pressure led to no changes.

Yet, it seems that Tettamanzi management was not so transparent, and that Toniolo Institute get to break even with external capital increase. Money of suspect belonging.

As well as the money fr. Verzé managed. In the past, San Raffaele was investigated for a billing malpractice. Another suicide took place – the Giuseppe Poggi di Longostrevi one. And there had been other investigations for false billing, that involved the president of Puglia Raffaele Fitto and the Angelucci family, “king” of the clinics in Italy, once owner of a couple of newspapers (now he just own one news daily).

There are too many connections to be traced back. And many feel the need to give birth to a new Toniolo Institute, to reset the “dirty” connections and gets back to the Catholic inspiration. At the same time, many feel the need for a new wave of Catholic politicians.

San Raffaele hospital – not officially part of the Vatican, but at the same time also netowrked with the Vatican  – could be the starting point of a wider project: to reset everything and get back to a truly Catholic education, looking for not-for-self-profit relationships.

If this is the aim, it is easy that many people are bothered from the will of change of the Secretary of State. A will of change directly inspired by Benedict XVI.  The question now is: will Saint Raphael suffice to heal the Church?