The Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great is notorious for dishing out knighthoods to enemies of the Church. This is just the latest affront to Our Savior and Pope St. Gregory the Great. Other scandalous benefactions include:
In 1998, with the approval of Pope John Paul II and the connivance of Cardinal Mahoney, then Archbishop of Los Angeles, media mogul and pornography disseminater (London Sun tabloid), Rupert Murdock (then on his second of four wives; he divorced the first three) was made a Knight Commander of St. Gregory. The order claims that it only accepts those of “unblemished character.” He was inducted at a ceremony in a Catholic Church in Los Angeles. Murdock has donated large sums to the LA Diocese Education Fund. In 2003. Another inductee into this Order was Orthodox Rabbi David Rosen, now a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, ex-Chief Rabbi of Ireland (1979–85). He is Director of the American Jewish Committee’s Department of Interreligious Affairs and has been a major figure in moving the Vatican to abandon the Church’s position on supersessionism, thereby promoting the heresy among Catholics that the Jewish religion and its denial of Christ is still salvific. So, too, there is Rabbi Leon Klenicki, another opponent of supersessionism, whom Benedict XVI made a Knight of the Order. (Brian Kelly, “Knights of Columbus: Compromise Weakens the Witness,” catholicisim.org.)
1Peter5, notes other atrocious abuses with the Gregorian papal knighhoods: “In 2008, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn awarded Renate Brauner, then-Deputy Mayor of Vienna, the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great. Brauner, too, was a notorious supporter of abortion at the time of her award. The late British media personality Jimmy Saville — accused after his death of raping or sexually abusing as many as 300 people, including children as young as nine years old — received the Order of St. Gregory from Pope John Paul II in 1990 for his charitable work. A formal request was initiated by the Catholic Church in England in 2012 to have the honor posthumously revoked. The Vatican’s response at the time came from papal spokesman Father Frederico Lombardi, who said that the Holy See ‘firmly condemns the horrible crimes of sexual abuse of minors’, adding that the revelations about Savile were ‘very grave’. Nevertheless, Lombardi stated that ‘As there does not exist any permanent official list of persons who have received papal honours in the past, it is not possible to strike anyone off a list that does not exist.'”
No list? Of course there is a list!
1Peter5, Steven Skojec: On January 12, OnePeterFive and The Lepanto Institute reported that Liliane Ploumen, a Dutch politician and international abortion activist, received the Order of St. Gregory award from the Vatican in 2017 — a pontifical award given for “meritorious service to the Church”. Multiple diplomatic sources around the Vatican have now confirmed to OnePeterFive that the award was given to Ploumen last year when she took part in an official state visit of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands to the Vatican in June of 2017. Report is here.
