title: Estelle Bennett

text: Bennett and her sister, Veronica (later known as Ronnie Bennett and Ronnie Spector), were raised up in New York City. They were children of an Irish-American father and African-American/Cherokee mother; they said they were bullied at school because of being light-skinned African Americans. Bennett attended George Washington High School in Manhattan where she was valedictorian. Studious and interested in fashion, she studied at Manhattan's Fashion Institute of Technology.


title: Estelle Bennett

text: When Bennett was 14, she and her sister Ronnie, and their cousin Nedra Talley started singing together. After a number of unsuccessful attempts, the trio reinvented themselves as the Ronettes. Signed up by 23-year-old Phil Spector, Ronnie became lead, with Estelle and Nedra as backing. They would eventually have a No.1 hit song in 1963, "Be My Baby".


title: Estelle Bennett

text: The Ronettes broke up in 1966. Bennett recorded a single in 1968 for Laurie Records, "The Year 2000/The Naked Boy". In 1969, now known as Estal Bond she fronted The Love Chain, an all-women quartet that also featured: Laura Logan, Ann Trip and Cookie Woodson. They recorded three 45's but only the Teddy Vann produced 'I'm Lovin' You Baby' released on Minit made any headway. The Love Chain had finished by 1971 and Estelle moved on to further projects. In 1972, Ronnie invited Estelle to her apartment to rehearse when Ronnie was trying to revive the Ronettes. Unfortunately the rehearsal was a failure. Ronnie stated that Estelle had "lost her coordination" and said that it was "bizarre. Also in 1972 She recorded "Baby with no name" and "Earthman" with the band "1984" and Estelle Bennett rarely performed in public from then on, largely quitting the music business.


title: Estelle Bennett

text: In 2007, when the Ronettes was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it was decided that she was too fragile to perform with them. She spoke two brief sentences during her acceptance speech: "I would just like to say, thank you very much for giving us this award. I'm Estelle of the Ronettes, thank you." She did, however, come back onstage for a final bow with the other Ronettes after the performance of "Be My Baby".


title: Estelle Bennett

text: She married the group's road manager, Joe Dong; the couple had a daughter. Her mental health deteriorated in the following years. It was reported that, during a visit to fellow former Ronette Nedra Talley, she slept through her own baby daughter's crying. She was reported to have had periods of homelessness, during which she would approach strangers in the streets of New York, telling people that she would be singing with the Ronettes in a jazz club.


title: Estelle Bennett

text: Bennett died of colon cancer, aged 67, in Englewood, New Jersey. Her body was discovered on February 11, 2009. A week after her death, it was revealed that she had had anorexia nervosa and schizophrenia in the years after the Ronettes' breakup and that she had subsequently been homeless in New York City.


title: Relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world

text: The relationship between Nazi Germany (1933–1945) and the leadership of the Arab world encompassed contempt, propaganda, collaboration, and in some instances emulation. Cooperative political and military relationships were founded on shared hostilities toward common enemies, such as the United Kingdom and the French Third Republic, along with communism, and Zionism. Another key foundation of this collaboration was the anti-Semitism of the Nazis and their hostility towards the United Kingdom and France, which was admired by some Arab and Muslim leaders, most notably the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini (see Anti-Semitism in Islam).


text: In public and private, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler made warm statements about Islam as a religion and political ideology, describing it as a more disciplined, militaristic, political, and practical form of religion than Christianity, and commending what they perceived to be Muhammad's skill in politics and military leadership. However, the official Nazi racial ideology also considered Arabs and North Africans to be racially inferior to Germans, a sentiment echoed by Hitler and other Nazi leaders to deprecate them. Hitler left no doubt about his disdain for the Arab world, writing in "Mein Kampf": "As a völkisch man, who appraises the value of men on a racial basis, I am prevented by mere knowledge of the racial inferiority of these so-called 'oppressed nations' from linking the destiny of my own people with theirs".


text: The Arabic-speaking world has attracted particular attention from historians examining Fascism beyond Europe. Focusing exclusively on pro-Nazi and pro-Fascist forces, these scholars have tended to emphasize the appeal that Fascism and Nazism had across the Arab world. More recently however, this narrative has been challenged by a number of scholars who assert that Arab political debates in the 1930s and 1940s were quite complex. Fascism and Nazism, they argue, were discussed alongside other political ideologies, such as communism, liberalism, and constitutionalism. Moreover, the recent revisionist works have stressed the anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi voices and movements in the Arab world. Despite the Mufti's efforts to get German backing for Arab independence, Hitler refused, remarking that he "wanted nothing from the Arabs".


text: In speeches, Hitler purportedly made apparently warm references towards Muslim culture such as: "The peoples of Islam will always be closer to us than, for example, France". Hitler was transcribed as saying: "Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers [...] then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world."


text: This exchange occurred when Hitler received Saudi Arabian ruler Ibn Saud's special envoy, Khalid Al Hud Al Gargani. Earlier in this meeting, Hitler noted that one of the three reasons why Nazi Germany had some interest in the Arabs was:


text: Gilbert Achcar wrote that the Führer "did not find it useful" to point out to his Arab visitors at that meeting that until then he had incited German Jews to emigrate to Palestine (see Aliyah Bet and Timeline of the Holocaust), and the Third Reich actively helped Zionist organizations get around British-imposed restrictions on Jewish immigration.


text: Hitler had told his military commanders in 1939, shortly before the beginning of World War II: "We shall continue to make disturbances in the Far East and in Arabia. Let us think as men and let us see in these peoples at best lacquered half-apes who are anxious to experience the lash."


text: Prior to the Second World War, all of North Africa and the Middle East was either within the sphere of influence or under the direct rule of, European colonial powers. Despite the Nazi racial theory, which denigrated Arabs as racially inferior, individual Arabs who assisted the Third Reich in fighting against the Allies were treated with dignity and respect. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, for example, "was granted honorary Aryan" status by the Nazis for his close collaboration with Hitler and the Third Reich.


text: The Nazi government developed a cordial association and cooperated with some Arab nationalist leaders based on their common enemies and shared distaste towards Jews and Zionism. Notable examples of these common-cause fights include the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine and other actions led by Amin al-Husseini, as well as the Anglo-Iraqi War, when the Golden Square (four generals led by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani) overthrew the pro-British 'Abd al-Ilah regency in Iraq and installed a pro-Axis government.


text: In response to the Rashid Ali coup, Hitler issued Führer Directive No. 30 on 23 May 1941, to support their cause. This order began: "The Arab Freedom Movement in the Middle East is our natural ally against England."


text: Massive programs of propaganda were launched in the Arab world, first by Fascist Italy and later on by Nazi Germany. The Nazis in particular focused on impacting the new generation of political thinkers and activists.


text: Erwin Rommel was almost as popular as Hitler. "Heil Rommel" was reportedly a common greeting in Arab countries. Some believed the Germans would help them in gaining independence from French and British rule. After France's defeat by Nazi Germany in 1940, some Arabs were making public chants against the French and British in the streets of Damascus: "No more Monsieur, no more Mister, Allah's in Heaven and Hitler's on earth." Posters in Arabic stating "In heaven God is your ruler, on earth Hitler" were frequently displayed in shops in the towns of Syria.


text: Some wealthy Arabs who traveled to Germany in the 1930s brought back fascist ideals and incorporated them into Arab nationalism. One of the principal founders of Ba'athist thought and the Ba'ath Party, Zaki al-Arsuzi, stated that Fascism and Nazism had greatly influenced Ba'athist ideology. A student of al-Arsuzi, Sami al-Jundi, wrote:


text: We were racialists, admiring Nazism, reading its books and the source of its thought, particularly Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", Fichte's "Addresses to the German Nation", and H. S. Chamberlain's "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century", which revolves on race. We were the first to think of translating "Mein Kampf".


text: Whoever has lived during this period in Damascus will appreciate the inclination of the Arab people to Nazism, for Nazism was the power which could serve as its champion, and he who is defeated will by nature love the victor. But our belief was rather different.


text: The two most noted Arab politicians who actively collaborated with the Nazis were the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, and the Iraqi prime minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani.


text: The British sent Amin al-Husseini into exile for his role in the Palestinian revolt of 1936–39. The ex-Mufti had agents in the Kingdom of Iraq, the French Mandate of Syria and in Mandatory Palestine. In 1941, al-Husseini actively supported the Iraqi Golden Square coup d'état, led by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani.


text: After the Golden Square Iraqi regime was defeated by British forces, Rashid Ali, al-Husseini and other Iraqi veterans took refuge in Europe, where they supported Axis interests. They were particularly successful in recruiting several tens-of-thousands of Muslims for membership in German "Schutzstaffel" (SS) units, and as propagandists for the Arabic-speaking world. The range of collaborative activities was wide. For instance, Anwar Sadat, who later became president of Egypt, was a willing co-operator in Nazi Germany's espionage according to his own memoirs. Adolf Hitler met with Amin al-Husseini on 28 November 1941. The official German notes of that meeting contain numerous references to combatting Jews both inside and outside Europe. The following excerpts from that meeting are statements from Hitler to al-Husseini:


text: Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests. ... This was the decisive struggle; on the political plane, it presented itself in the main as a conflict between Germany and England, but ideologically it was a battle between National Socialism and the Jews. It went without saying that Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle, because platonic promises were useless in a war for survival or destruction in which the Jews were able to mobilize all of England's power for their ends...the Fuhrer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany's objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations, which he had secretly prepared. When that time had come, Germany could also be indifferent to French reaction to such a declaration.


text: Amin al-Husseini became the most prominent Arab collaborator with the Axis powers. He developed friendships with high-ranking Nazis, including Heinrich Himmler, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and (possibly) Adolf Eichmann. He contributed to Axis propaganda services and to the recruitment of Muslim and Arab soldiers for the Nazi armed forces, including three SS divisions consisting of Bosnian Muslims. He was involved in planning "wartime operations directed against Palestine and Iraq, including parachuting Germans and Arab agents to foment attacks against the Jews in Palestine." He assisted the German entry into North Africa, particularly the German entry into Tunisia and Libya. His espionage network provided the Wehrmacht with a forty-eight-hour warning of the Allied invasion of North Africa. The Wehrmacht, however, ignored this information, which turned out to be completely accurate. He intervened and protested to government authorities in order to prevent Jews from emigrating to Mandatory Palestine. There is persuasive evidence that he was aware of the Nazi Final Solution. After the war ended, he claimed that he never knew about the extermination camps or Nazi plans for the genocide of European Jews, that the evidence against him was forged by his Jewish enemies, and even denied having met Eichmann. He is still a controversial figure, both vilified and honored by different political factions in the contemporary Arab world.


text: Researchers like Jeffrey Herf, Meir Zamir, and Hans Goldenbaum agree on the importance of the German propaganda effort in the Middle East and North Africa. But latest research on the massive and influential radio broadcasts was able to prove "that the texts were supplied by German personnel and not, as sometimes believed, by the reader[s] of the Arabic broadcasts [...]". Furthermore, Goldenbaum concludes "that the man who was long regarded as the Reich's most important Muslim of all, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, did not play any particularly important role in this case. Despite the fact that his Arabic speeches were broadcast by Radio Berlin and he was always presented as a role model, al-Husseini did not have any influence on the broadcast content. The Arabs in general did not seem to have been partners with equal rights. Instead they were secondary recipients of propaganda and orders, Goldenbaum concluded. Cooperation never went beyond the emphasized common battle against colonialism."


text: Gilbert Achcar, a professor of Development Studies at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, argues that historical narratives often over-emphasize collaboration and under-appreciate progressive Arab political history, overshadowing the many dimensions of conflict between Nazism and the Arab World. He accuses Zionists of promulgating a 'collaborationist' narrative for partisan purposes. He proposes that the dominant Arab political attitudes were 'anti-colonialism' and 'anti-Zionism,' though only a comparatively small faction adopted anti-Semitism, and most Arabs were actually pro-Ally and anti-Axis (as evidenced by the high number of Arabs who fought for Allied forces). Achcar states:


text: The Zionist narrative of the Arab world is based centrally around one figure who is ubiquitous in this whole issue—the Jerusalem Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who collaborated with the Nazis. But the historical record is actually quite diverse. The initial reaction to Nazism and Hitler in the Arab world and especially from the intellectual elite was very critical towards Nazism, which was perceived as a totalitarian, racist and imperialist phenomenon. It was criticized by the liberals or what I call the liberal Westernizers, i.e. those who were attracted by Western liberalism, as well as by the Marxists and left-wing nationalists who denounced Nazism as another form of imperialism. In fact, only one of the major ideological currents in the Arab world developed a strong affinity with Western anti-Semitism, and that was Islamic fundamentalism—not all Islam or Islamic movements but those with the most reactionary interpretations of Islam. They reacted to what was happening in Palestine by espousing Western anti-Semitic attitudes.


text: The Palestinian Arab and Nazi political leaders said that they had a common cause against "International Jewry". However, the most significant practical effect of Nazi anti-Jewish policy between 1933 and 1942 was to radically increase the immigration rate of German and other European Jews to Palestine and to double the population of Palestinian Jews. Al-Husseini had sent messages to Berlin through , the German consul general in Jerusalem, endorsing the advent of the Nazi regime as early as March 1933, and was enthusiastic over the Nazi anti-Jewish policy, and particularly the anti-Jewish boycott in Nazi Germany. "[The Mufti and other sheikhs asked] only that German Jews not be sent to Palestine."


text: Nazi policy for solving the "Jewish Question" until the end of 1937 emphasized motivating German Jews to emigrate from German territory. During this period the League of Nations Mandate for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Mandatory Palestine to be used as a refuge for Jews was "still internationally recognized". The Gestapo and the SS inconsistently cooperated with a variety of Jewish organizations and efforts (e.g., Hanotaiah Ltd., the Anglo-Palestine Bank, the Temple Society Bank, HIAS, Joint Distribution Committee, Revisionist Zionists, and others), most notably in the Haavurah Agreements, to facilitate emigration to Mandatory Palestine.


text: Nora Levin wrote in 1968: "Up to the middle of 1938, Palestine had received one third of all the Jews who had emigrated from Germany since 1933 – 50,000 out of a total of 150,000." Edwin Black, benefitting from more modern scholarship, has written that 60,000 German Jews immigrated into Palestine between 1933 through 1936, bringing with them $100,000,000 dollars ($1.6 billion in 2009 dollars). This precipitous increase in the Jewish Palestinian population stimulated Palestinian Arab political resistance to continued Jewish immigration, and was a principal cause for the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, which in turn led to the British White Paper decision to abandon the League of Nations Mandate to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine. The resultant change in British policy effectively closed Palestine to most European Jews who were fleeing Nazi persecution during World War II. After 1938 the majority of Zionist organizations adhered to a strategy of "Fighting the White Paper as if there was not War, and fighting the War as if there was no White Paper". Zionists would smuggle Jews in Palestine whenever possible, regardless if this brought them into conflict with the British authorities. At the same time, the Zionists and other Jews would ally themselves to the British struggle against Germany and the Axis powers, even while the British authorities refused to allow the migration of European Jews into Palestine.


text: One consequence of al-Husseini's opposition to Britain's mandate in Palestine and his rejection of the British attempts to work out a compromise between Zionists and Palestinian Arabs was that the Mufti was exiled from Palestine. Many of his followers, who had fought in guerilla campaigns against Jews and the British in Palestine, followed him and continued to work for his political goals. Among the most notable Palestinian soldiers in this category was Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, a kinsman and officer of al-Husseini who had been wounded twice in the early stages of the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. Al-Husseini sent Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni to Germany in 1938 for explosives training. Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni then worked with al-Husseini to support the Golden Square regime, and consequently was tried and sent to prison by the British after they recaptured Iraq. He subsequently became the popular leader of approximately 50,000 Palestinian Arabs who joined the Mufti's Army of the Holy War during the 1947-1948 Arab–Israeli War. His fellow Iraq-veteran and German collaborator Fawzi al-Qawuqji became a rival general in that same struggle against Zionism.


text: After the Kristallnacht pogroms in November 1938, most Jewish and Zionist organizations aligned with Britain and its allies to oppose Nazi Germany. After this time the organized assistance by the Gestapo to the Jewish organizations who transported European Jews to Palestine became much more sporadic, although bribery of individual Germans often help accomplish such operations even after official policy discouraged them.


text: Al-Husseini opposed all immigration of Jews into Palestine. His numerous letters appealing to various governmental authorities to prevent Jewish emigration to Palestine have been widely republished and cited as documentary evidence of his collaboration with the Nazis and his participative support for their actions. For instance, in June 1943, al-Husseini recommended to the Hungarian minister that it would be better to send the Jewish population of Hungary to the Nazi concentration camps in Poland rather than let them find asylum in Palestine (it is not entirely clear whether al-Husseini was aware of the extermination camps in Poland, e.g. Auschwitz, at this time):


text: I ask your Excellency to permit me to draw your attention to the necessity of preventing the Jews from leaving your country for Palestine, and if there are reasons which make their removal necessary, it would be indispensable and infinitely preferable to send them to other countries where they would find themselves under active control, for example, in Poland ...


text: Achcar quotes al-Husseini's memoirs about these efforts to influence the Axis powers to prevent emigration of Eastern European Jews to Palestine:


text: We combatted this enterprise by writing to Ribbentrop, Himmler, and Hitler, and, thereafter, the governments of Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and other countries. We succeeded in foiling this initiative, a circumstance that led the Jews to make terrible accusations against me, in which they held me accountable for the liquidation of four hundred thousand Jews who were unable to emigrate to Palestine in this period. They added that I should be tried as a war criminal in Nuremberg.


text: was certainly legitimate when it was addressed as an appeal to the British mandatory authorities ... It had no legitimacy whatsoever when addressed to Nazi authorities who had cooperated with the Zionists to send tens of thousands of German Jews to Palestine and then set out to exterminate the Jews of Europe. The Mufti was well aware that the European Jews were being wiped out; he never claimed the contrary. Nor, unlike some of his present-day admirers, did he play the ignoble, perverse, and stupid game of Holocaust denial ... His armour-propre would not allow him to justify himself to the Jews ... gloating that the Jews had paid a much higher price than the Germans ... he cites  : "Their losses in the Second World War represent more than thirty percent of the total number of their people ... Statements like this, from a man who was well placed to know what the Nazis had done ... constitute a powerful argument against Holocaust deniers. Husseini reports that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler ... told him in summer 1943 that the Germans had 'already exterminated more than three million' Jews: "I was astonished by this figure, as I had known nothing about the matter until then." ... Thus. in 1943, Husseini knew about the genocide ... Himmler ... again in the summer of 1941 ... let him in on a secret that ... Germany would have an atomic bomb in three years' time ...


text: It is the duty of Muhammadans in general and Arabs in particular to  drive all Jews from Arab and Muhammadan countries ... Germany is also struggling against the common foe who oppressed Arabs and Muhammadans in their different countries. It has very clearly recognized the Jews for what they are and resolved to find a definitive solution [] for the Jewish danger that will eliminate the scourge that Jews represent in the world.


text: On 1 April 1941, a day after General Erwin Rommel began his Tunisian offensive, the 1941 Iraqi coup d'état overthrew the pro-British Kingdom of Iraq. Fritz Grobba served intermittently as the German ambassador in Iraq from 1932 to 1941, supporting anti-Jewish and fascist movements in the Arab world. Intellectuals and army officers were invited to Germany as guests of the Nazi party, and antisemitic material was published in the newspapers. The German embassy purchased the newspaper "al-Alam al-Arabi" ("The Arab World") which published antisemitic, anti-British, and pro-Nazi propaganda, including a serialized translation of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in Arabic.


text: While Nazi Germany was not openly allied with the Ba'athist government in Iraq like Fascist Italy was during the Anglo-Iraqi War, it provided air support. On 1–2 June 1941, immediately after the collapse of the pro-Fascist Rashid Ali government in Iraq, al-Husseini and others inspired a pogrom against the Jewish population of Baghdad known as "the Farhud". The estimates of Jewish victims vary from less than 110 to over 600 killed, and from 240 to 2000 wounded. Gilbert Achcar claims that historian Bernard Lewis cites the numbers (officially 600 killed and 240 injured, with unofficial sources being "much higher") as the number of Jewish victims, without citing a single reference. Edwin Black concludes that the exact numbers will never be known, pointing out the improbability of the initial estimate in the official reports of 110 fatalities that included both Arabs and Jews (including 28 women), as opposed to the claims of Jewish sources that as many as 600 Jews were killed. Similarly, the estimates of Jewish homes destroyed range from 99 to over 900 houses. Though these figures are debated in the secondary literature, it is generally agreed that over 580 Jewish businesses were looted. The Iraqi-Arab Futuwwa youth group—modeled after the Hitler Youth—were widely credited with the Farhud. The Futuwwa were commanded by Iraqi minister of education Saib Shawkat, who also praised Hitler for eradicating Jews.


text: In June 1941, Wehrmacht High Command Directive No. 32 and the "Instructions for Special Staff F" designated Special Staff F as the Wehrmacht's central agency for all issues that affected the Arab world.


text: On 20 January 1942, 15 high-ranking Nazi Party and German government officials met at a villa in Wannsee, a Berlin suburb, to coordinate the execution of the "Final Solution" ("Endlösung") of the Jewish Question. At this Wannsee Conference, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler's deputy and head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office, or RSHA), noted the numbers of Jews to be eliminated in each territory. In the notation for France there are two entries, 165,000 for Occupied France, and 700,000 for the Unoccupied Zone, which included France's North African possessions, i.e. Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.


text: The SS had established a special unit of 22 people in 1942 "to Kill Jews in North Africa". It was led by the SS functionary Walter Rauff, who helped develop the mobile gassing vehicles the Germans used to murder Russian prisoners and Jewish people in Russia and Poland. A network of labor camps was established in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Over 2,500 Tunisian Jews perished during a six-month period in these camps.


text: According to Robert Satloff, only one Arab in North Africa, Hassan Ferjani, was convicted by an Allied military tribunal in World War II for performing actions that led to the deaths of Jews, male members of the Scemla family of Tunisia, while many Arabs acted to save Jews. For instance, King Mohammed V refused to make the 200,000 Jews who were living in Morocco wear yellow stars, even though this discriminatory practice was enforced in France. He is reported to have said: "There are no Jews in Morocco. There are only subjects." The historian Haim Saadon opines that bar some exceptions, there was no violence towards Jews from Muslims and that although there was no particular sense of camaraderie, Jews and Muslims treated each other quite well.


text: Following the defeat of the Golden Square in Iraq in May–June 1941, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani fled to Iran but was not to stay long. On 25 August 1941, Anglo-Soviet forces invaded Iran, removing Reza Shah from power. Gaylani then fled to German-occupied Europe. In Berlin, he was received by German dictator Adolf Hitler, and he was recognized as the leader of the Iraqi government in exile. Upon the defeat of Germany, Gaylani again fled and found refuge, this time in Saudi Arabia.


text: Amin al-Husseini arrived in Rome on 10 October 1941. He outlined his proposals before Alberto Ponce de Leon. On condition that the Axis powers "recognize in principle the unity, independence, and sovereignty, of an Arab state, including Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Transjordan", he offered support in the war against Britain and stated his willingness to discuss the issues of "the Holy Places, Lebanon, the Suez Canal, and Aqaba". The Italian foreign ministry approved al-Husseini's proposal, recommended giving him a grant of one million lire, and referred him to Benito Mussolini, who met al-Husseini on 27 October. According to al-Husseini's account, it was an amicable meeting in which Mussolini expressed his hostility to the Jews and Zionism.


text: Back in the summer of 1940 and again in February 1941, al-Husseini submitted to the Nazi German Government a draft declaration of German-Arab cooperation, containing a clause:


text: Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic ("völkisch") interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.


text: Al-Husseini helped organize Arab students and North African emigres in Germany into the Free Arabian Legion in the German Army that hunted down Allied parachutists in the Balkans and fought on the Russian front.


text: Several emerging movements in the Arab world were influenced by European fascist and Nazi organizations during the 1930s. The Young Egypt Party ("Green shirts") closely resembled the Hitler Youth and was "obviously Nazi in form", according to historian Bernard Lewis. The fascist pan-Arabist Al-Muthanna Club and its al-Futuwwa (Hitler Youth) type movement, participated in the 1941 Farhud attack on Baghdad's Jewish community.


text: The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) adopted styles of fascism. Its emblem, the red hurricane, was taken from the Nazi swastika, leader Antoun Saadeh was known as "al-za'im" (the leader), and the party anthem was "Syria, Syria, über alles" sung to the same tune as the German national anthem. He founded the fascist SSNP with a program that Syrians were "a distinctive and naturally superior race".


title: Your Mom's House

text: Your Mom's House is a comedy podcast hosted by married comedians Tom Segura and Christina Pazsitzky. The podcast was started in 2010 and covers a wide range of topics such as ongoing events, comedy, and the daily life of the two co-hosts—interspersed with toilet humor, running jokes, and commentary on unusual or shocking internet videos. The comedians typically stay away from political discussions. Additionally YMH Studios produces a number of podcasts within their network including "2 Bears 1 Cave" and "Dr. Drew After Dark", as well as live pay-per-view events.


title: Your Mom's House

text: Segura and Pazsitzky originally started the podcast through the Deathsquad Network, and produced by Brian Redban. Segura and Pazsitzky mentioned in a 2014 "Vice" article that Joe Rogan had encouraged them to start a podcast. After 40 episodes they started producing the show themselves with the help of producer Nadav Itzkowitz (since jokingly renamed to Paddy O'Callahan to hide his Jewish descent).


title: Your Mom's House

text: In 2012, "Your Mom's House" was chosen as a finalist in the Best Comedy category at the first annual Stitcher Awards, along with "Smodcast", "The Adam Carolla Show", "The Joe Rogan Experience", "The Nerdist", and "WTF with Marc Maron".


title: Your Mom's House

text: YMH Studios has also produced a number of other podcasts, including "2 Bears 1 Cave" (hosted by Segura and Bert Kreischer), "Dr. Drew After Dark" (hosted by Drew Pinsky), "Tom Segura en Español" (a Spanish podcast hosted by Segura), "Where My Mom's At" (hosted by Pazsitzky), and "Tom Talks" (a solo, interview driven podcast with Segura). "The HoneyDew" (hosted by Ryan Sickler) was previously produced at YMH Studios before separating in summer 2020. Beginning in fall of 2020 the studio began the new podcast "Roach Motel" hosted by Josh Potter, however this show was quickly re-named "The Josh Potter Show" after only seven episodes due to a copyright dispute.


title: Your Mom's House

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, YMH Studios began producing live, pay-per-view shows beginning with "Your Mom's House Live & Uncensored" on August 14, 2020. To date the studio has produced three live shows for "2 Bears 1 Cave" (including a Big Game event with NFL Hall of Famer Warren Sapp), and seven for Your Mom's House. In late 2021, YMH Studios moved from Los Angeles, to Austin, Texas. Since the move, YMH Studios produced three more live shows, YMH Live 6, 7, and 8, with the seventh installment including Rogan as a special guest.


title: Your Mom's House

text: Episodes often feature prominent guests from the world of entertainment and pop culture, notably fellow stand-up comedians. Recent episodes have included such comedians as Hasan Minhaj, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Josh Wolf, Pauly Shore, Steve Byrne, Chris Distefano, Duncan Trussell, Kevin Nealon, and Fortune Feimster.


title: Your Mom's House

text: The show has branched out to non-comedian guests including musical artists like Big Daddy Kane, Brendon Urie, and Too Short; actors including Rob Iler, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Alyssa Milano, and Elizabeth Lail; celebrity personalities like Cesar Millan and Rhett & Link, and adult actresses Alexis Fawx and Kate Kennedy.


title: Your Mom's House

text: Often the podcast will feature live calls to Segura's father, affectionately called Top Dog, and mother Charo, as long as she can find time from her many games of bridge. The YMH staff includes Nadav Itzkowitz, Enny Ali, Chris Larson, Baby Zolo, and others, who make regular appearances working in the sound booth.


title: Your Mom's House

text: "2 Bears 1 Cave" has had guest hosts due to either Kreischer touring, or when Segura was injured in a basketball dunking challenge. Guest hosts thus far have been YMH team members Christina P and Dr. Drew, comedians Ryan Sickler, Tim Dillon, Whitney Cummings, Bobby Lee, and Kreischer's wife LeeAnn Kreischer.


title: Your Mom's House

text: The show's format mostly consists of Segura and Pazsitzky talking about and commenting on various videos and clips which are acquired through YouTube, TikTok, fan submission, etc. Through this format, the hosts and the fans of the show commonly use quotes to create a lingo which is used throughout the podcast. Some common phrases from the show include: "high and tight", "cool guy", "cool guy club", "try it out", "good morning, Julia", "full throttle", "ta ta there, retard". Along with these quotations, Pazsitzky and Segura occasionally refer to each other as "Jeans" which stemmed from calling each other "mommy" and "mom jeans", and they refer fans of the show as "mommies" as a reference to the title of the show. It is common for fans of the show to use this lingo when referring to the show on social media.


title: Your Mom's House

text: Starting in 2019, fans of the show commonly posted comments on the Instagram page of singer/songwriter Garth Brooks, which was referred to as the "Garth Brooks Instagram Takeover", leading to a restriction of Segura's comments on Garth's Instagram page. The comments used the lingo of the show and commonly asked Brooks questions about where he was keeping the bodies. This line of questioning originated from Segura jokingly calling the singer "insane" and a "serial killer" in numerous episodes.


title: Your Mom's House

text: Most episodes feature original music from fans that often incorporate samples from the videos played on the show.


title: Physical property

text: A physical property is any property that is measurable, whose value describes a state of a physical system. The changes in the physical properties of a system can be used to describe its changes between momentary states. Physical properties are often referred to as observables. They are not modal properties. A quantifiable physical property is called physical quantity.


title: Physical property

text: Physical properties are often characterized as intensive and extensive properties. An intensive property does not depend on the size or extent of the system, nor on the amount of matter in the object, while an extensive property shows an additive relationship. These classifications are in general only valid in cases when smaller subdivisions of the sample do not interact in some physical or chemical process when combined.


title: Physical property

text: Properties may also be classified with respect to the directionality of their nature. For example, isotropic properties do not change with the direction of observation, and anisotropic properties do have spatial variance.


title: Physical property

text: It may be difficult to determine whether a given property is a material property or not. Color, for example, can be seen and measured; however, what one perceives as color is really an interpretation of the reflective properties of a surface and the light used to illuminate it. In this sense, many ostensibly physical properties are called supervenient. A supervenient property is one which is actual, but is secondary to some underlying reality. This is similar to the way in which objects are supervenient on atomic structure. A cup might have the physical properties of mass, shape, color, temperature, etc., but these properties are supervenient on the underlying atomic structure, which may in turn be supervenient on an underlying quantum structure.


title: Physical property

text: Physical properties are contrasted with chemical properties which determine the way a material behaves in a chemical reaction.


title: Physical property

text: The physical properties of an object that are traditionally defined by classical mechanics are often called mechanical properties. Other broad categories, commonly cited, are electrical properties, optical properties, thermal properties, etc. Examples of physical properties include:


title: Banana slug

text: They are often bright yellow (giving rise to the "banana" common name) although they may also be greenish, brown, tan, or white.


title: Banana slug

text: Banana slugs are often bright yellow (giving rise to the banana nomenclature) although they may also be greenish, brown, tan, or white. The species "Ariolimax columbianus" sometimes has black spots that are so extensive that the animal looks almost entirely black.


title: Banana slug

text: Individual slugs will change colors with alterations in food consumption, light exposure, and moisture levels. Color may also indicate whether a slug is healthy or injured or what age it is.


title: Banana slug

text: The Pacific banana slug is the second-largest species of terrestrial slug in the world, growing up to long, and weights of .


title: Banana slug

text: (The largest slug species is "Limax cinereoniger" of Europe, which can reach in length.) Banana slugs have an average lifespan of 1–7 years.


title: Banana slug

text: Banana slugs (like other gastropods and many other mollusks) have a radula, a ribbon-like anatomical structure covered in rows of microscopic teeth; the radula is used for feeding. Individuals can move at per minute.


title: Banana slug

text: Slugs use two pairs of tentacles to sense their environment. The larger, upper pair, termed "eyestalks," are used to detect light or movement. The second, lower pair are used to detect chemicals. The tentacles can retract and extend themselves to avoid damage.


title: Banana slug

text: Banana slugs have a single lung (on the right side) which opens externally via a pneumostome. The pneumostome lung cavity is heavily vascularized to allow gas exchange. Dehydration is a major problem for the mollusk; to combat this, banana slugs excrete a thick coating of mucus around their bodies and can also aestivate. To do so, they secrete a protective layer of mucus and insulate themselves with a layer of soil and leaves. They remain inactive in this state until the environment becomes moist again. Due to their susceptibility to desiccation, they are more commonly active at night, but also appear during cool, moist days.


title: Banana slug

text: The slime also contains pheromones to attract other slugs for mating. Slugs are simultaneous hermaphrodites, and reproduce by exchanging sperm with their mate. They produce up to 75 translucent eggs, which are laid in a log or on leaves. Slugs mate and lay eggs throughout the year. The adults provide no further care for their eggs beyond finding a suitable hiding spot, and the eggs are abandoned as soon as the clutch is laid.


title: Banana slug

text: "Ariolimax columbianus" is native to the forest floors along North America's Pacific coastal coniferous rainforest belt (including douglas-fir forests and redwood forests) which stretches from Southeastern Alaska to Santa Cruz, California.


title: Banana slug

text: Several discontinuous populations also occur in forested slopes of the coastal and transverse mountain ranges south of Santa Cruz as far south as Ventura County, with a tiny, isolated population located in Palomar Mountain State Park within the Palomar Mountain Range in San Diego County, California. The Palomar Mountains have lush Sierra Nevada-like coniferous forests and black oak woodlands unlike the surrounding semiarid lands of inland San Diego County and mark the southernmost population of banana slugs. The slugs were rediscovered several years ago along Doane Creek, part of the Lower Doane Valley/Lower French Trail. This population is believed to be a relict from the Pleistocene epoch when the climate was cooler and wetter.


title: Banana slug

text: Small, isolated populations also occur east of the Pacific Coast such as in the inland coniferous rainforests of British Columbia's Columbia Mountains (interior wet-belt), just west of the Canadian Rockies, and have been seen at lower elevations near creeks and damp areas of Mount Revelstoke National Park. Small populations of banana slugs have also been seen along creek and damp areas of the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains to the north of Yosemite National Park in California. Slug densities in these outlying areas in the Columbia Mountains, Sierra Nevada Mountains, and areas south of Santa Cruz are low compared to densities in the coastal coniferous rainforest belt and are rather restricted to damp areas near creeks, ravines, and gullies. This population may also be a relic from the Pleistocene epoch.


title: Banana slug

text: Banana slugs are detritivores, or decomposers. They process leaves, animal droppings, moss, and dead plant material, and then recycle them into soil humus. They seem to have a fondness for mushrooms, spread seeds and spores when they eat, and excrete a nitrogen-rich fertilizer. By consuming detritus (dead organic matter) slugs contribute to decomposition and the nutrient cycles and are an important aspect of the ecosystem.


title: Banana slug

text: Raccoons, garter snakes, ducks, geese and salamanders sometimes eat banana slugs; they roll the slugs in soil to bind the slime. Juvenile banana slugs are sometimes eaten by moles or shrews.


title: Banana slug

text: The mucus secreted by banana slugs contains chemicals that can numb the tongue of predators. This mucus can absorb up to 100 times its volume in water. Technically, this slime is neither liquid nor solid, but rather a liquid crystal substance and has many properties that interest materials engineers.


title: Banana slug

text: Banana slugs have been used as food by Yurok Natives of the North Coast and by German immigrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A yearly festival and contest is held at Russian River including slug races and a contest for recipes though, even when fed corn meal to purge them or soaked in vinegar to remove slime, the slugs' flavor is not always well regarded for the modern palate, and the most successful entries are often those in which the flavor is unnoticeable.


title: Banana slug

text: The banana slug (specifically "Ariolimax dolichophallus", which is the most common banana slug on campus) is the mascot of the University of California, Santa Cruz. It is common in local forests, was approved by a student vote and has won awards. One T-shirt caption was: "No known predators!"


title: Basileus

text: Basileus () is a Greek term and title that has signified various types of monarchs in history. In the English-speaking world it is perhaps most widely understood to mean "monarch", referring to either a "king" or an "emperor" and also by bishops of the Eastern orthodox church and Eastern Catholic Churches. The title was used by sovereigns and other persons of authority in ancient Greece, the Byzantine emperors, and the kings of modern Greece.


title: Basileus

text: The feminine forms are "basileia" (), "basilis" (), "basilissa" (), or the archaic "basilinna" (), meaning "queen" or "empress".


title: Basileus

text: The etymology of "basileus" is uncertain. The Mycenaean form was *"gʷasileus" (Linear B: , "qa-si-re-u"), denoting some sort of court official or local chieftain, but not an actual king. Its hypothetical earlier Proto-Greek form would be *"gʷatileus". Some linguists assume that it is a non-Greek word that was adopted by Bronze Age Greeks from a pre-existing linguistic Pre-Greek substrate of the Eastern Mediterranean. Schindler argues for an inner-Greek innovation of the "-eus" inflection type from Indo-European material rather than a Mediterranean loan.


title: Basileus

text: The first written instance of this word is found on the baked clay tablets discovered in excavations of Mycenaean palaces originally destroyed by fire. The tablets are dated from the to the and are inscribed with the script, which was deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952 and corresponds to a very early form of Greek. The word "basileus" is written as "qa-si-re-u" and its original meaning was "chieftain" (in one particular tablet the chieftain of the guild of bronzesmiths is referred to as "qa-si-re-u"). Here the initial letter "q-" represents the PIE labiovelar consonant "*/gʷ/", transformed in later Greek into "/b/". Linear B uses the same glyph for "/l/" and "/r/", now transcribed with a Latin "r" by uniform convention. (Similarly, the Old Persian word "vazir" also has almost the same meaning as "chieftain".) Linear B only represents syllables of single vowel, or of a consonant-vowel form, therefore any final "-s" is omitted.


title: Basileus

text: The word can be contrasted with "wanax", another word used more specifically for "king" and usually meaning "High King" or "overlord". With the collapse of Mycenaean society, the position of "wanax" ceases to be mentioned, and the "basileis" (the plural form) appear the topmost potentates in Greek society. In the works of Homer "wanax" appears, in the form "ánax", mostly in descriptions of Zeus ("ánax andrōn te theōn te", "king of men and of the gods") and of very few human monarchs, most notably Agamemnon. Otherwise the term survived almost exclusively as a component in compound personal names (e.g., "Anax"agóras, Pleisto"ánax") and is still in use in Modern Greek in the description of the "anáktoron / anáktora" ("[place "or" home] of the "ánax""), i.e. of the royal palace. The latter is essentially the same word as "wa-na-ka-te-ro", "wanákteros", "of the "wanax" / king" or "belonging to the "wanax" / king", used in Linear B tablets to refer to various craftsmen serving the king (e.g. the "palace", or royal, spinner, or the ivory worker), and to items belonging or offered to the king (javelin shafts, wheat, spices, precincts etc.).


title: Basileus

text: Most of the Greek leaders in Homer's works are described as "basileís", which is rendered conventionally in English as "kings". However, a more accurate translation may be "princes" or "chieftains", which would better represent conditions in Greek society in Homer's time, and also the roles ascribed to Homer's characters. Agamemnon tries to give orders to Achilles among many others, while another "basileus" serves as his charioteer. His will, however, is not to be obeyed automatically. In Homer the "wanax" is expected to rule over the other "basileis" by consensus rather than by coercion, which is why Achilles rebels (the main theme of the Iliad) when he decides that Agamemnon is treating him disrespectfully.


title: Basileus

text: A study by R. Drews demonstrates that even at the apex of Geometric and Archaic Greek society, "basileus" did not automatically translate to "king": In a number of places authority was exercised by a college of "basileis" drawn from a particular clan or group, and the office had term limits. However, "basileus" could also be applied to the hereditary leaders of "tribal" states, like those of the Arcadians and the Messenians, in which cases the term approximated the meaning of "king".


title: Basileus

text: According to pseudo-Archytas's treatise "On justice and law" "Basileus" is more adequately translated into "Sovereign" than into "king". The reason for this is that it designates more the "person" of king than the "office" of king: the power of magistrates ("arkhontes", "archons") derives from their social functions or offices, whereas the sovereign derives his power from himself. Sovereigns have "auctoritas", whereas magistrates retain "imperium". Pseudo-Archytas aimed at creating a theory of sovereignty completely enfranchised from laws, being itself the only source of legitimacy. He goes so far as qualifying the "Basileus" as "nomos empsykhos", or "living law", which is the origin, according to Agamben, of the "Führerprinzip" and of Carl Schmitt's theories on dictatorship.


title: Basileus

text: In classical times, most Greek states had abolished the hereditary royal office in favor of democratic or oligarchic rule. Some exceptions existed, namely the two hereditary Kings of Sparta (who served as joint commanders of the army, and were also called "arkhagetai"), the Kings of Cyrene, the Kings of Macedon and of the Molossians in Epirus and Kings of Arcadian Orchomenus. The Greeks also used the term to refer to various kings of "barbaric" (i.e. non-Greek) tribes in Thrace and Illyria, as well as to the Achaemenid kings of Persia. The Persian king was also referred to as "Megas Basileus"/"Basileus Megas" (Great King) or "Basileus Basileōn", a translation of the Persian title "xšāyaθiya xšāyaθiyānām" ("King of Kings"), or simply ""the" king". There was also a cult of Zeus "Basileus" at Lebadeia. Aristotle distinguished the "basileus", constrained by law, from the unlimited tyrant ("tyrannos"), who had generally seized control.


title: Basileus

text: At Athens, the "archon basileus" was one of the nine archons, magistrates selected by lot. Of these, the "archon eponymos" (for whom the year was named), the polemarch (polemos archon = war lord) and the "basileus" divided the powers of Athens' ancient kings, with the "basileus" overseeing religious rites and homicide cases. His wife had to ritually marry Dionysus at the Anthesteria festival. Philippides of Paiania was one of the richest Athenians during the age of Lycurgus of Athens, he was honoured archon, basileus in 293–292 BCE. Similar vestigial offices termed "basileus" existed in other Greek city-states.


title: Basileus

text: By contrast, the authoritarian rulers were never termed "basileus" in classical Greece, but "archon" (ruler) or "tyrannos" (tyrant); although Pheidon of Argos is described by Aristotle as a "basileus" who made himself into a "tyrannos".


title: Basileus

text: Many Greek authors, reconciling Carthaginian supremacy in the western Mediterranean with eastern stereotypes of absolutist non-Hellenic government, termed the Punic chief magistrate, the "sufet", as "basileus" in their native language. In fact, this office conformed to largely republican frameworks, being approximately equivalent in mandate to the Roman consul. This conflation appears notably in Aristotle's otherwise positive description of the Carthaginian Constitution in the "Politics", as well as in the writings of Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, and Diogenes Laertius. Roman and early Christian writings sourced from Greek fostered further mischaracterizations, with the "sufet" mislabeled as the Latin "rex".


title: Basileus

text: "Basileus" and "Megas Basileus"/"Basileus Megas" were exclusively used by Alexander the Great and his Hellenistic successors in Ptolemaic Egypt, Asia (e.g. the Seleucid Empire, the Kingdom of Pergamon and Kingdom of Pontus) and Macedon. The feminine counterpart is "basilissa" (queen), meaning both a queen regnant (such as Cleopatra VII of Egypt) and a queen consort. It is at this time that the term "basileus" acquired a fully royal connotation, in stark contrast with the much less sophisticated earlier perceptions of kingship within Greece.


title: Basileus

text: Under Roman rule, the term "basileus" came to be used, in the Hellenistic tradition, to designate the Roman Emperor in the ordinary and literary speech of the Greek-speaking Eastern Mediterranean. Although the early Roman Emperors were careful to retain the façade of the republican institutions and to not formally adopt monarchical titles, the use of "basileus" amply illustrates that contemporaries clearly perceived that the Roman Empire was a monarchy in all but name. Nevertheless, despite its widespread use, due to its "royal" associations the title "basileus" remained unofficial for the Emperor, and was restricted in official documents to client kings in the East. Instead, in official context the imperial titles "Caesar Augustus", translated or transliterated into Greek as "Kaisar Sebastos" or "Kaisar Augoustos", and "Imperator", translated as "Autokratōr", were used.


title: Basileus

text: By the 4th century however, "basileus" was applied in official usage exclusively to the two rulers considered equals to the Roman Emperor: the Sassanid Persian "shahanshah" ("king of kings"), and to a lesser degree the King of Axum, whose importance was rather peripheral in the Byzantine worldview. Consequently, the title acquired the connotation of "emperor", and when barbarian kingdoms emerged on the ruins of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, their rulers were referred to in Greek not as "basileus" but as "rēx" or "rēgas", the hellenized forms of the Latin title "rex", king.


title: Basileus

text: The first documented use of "basileus Rhomaíōn" in official context comes, surprisingly, from the Persians: in a letter sent to Emperor Maurice (r. 582–602) by Chosroes II, Maurice is addressed in Greek as "basileus Rhomaíōn" instead of the habitual Middle Persian appellation "kēsar-i Hrōm" ("Caesar of the Romans"), while the Persian ruler refers to himself correspondingly as "Persōn basileus", thereby dropping his own claim to the Greek equivalent of his formal title, "basileus basileōn" ("king of kings"). The title appears to have slowly crept into imperial titulature after that, and Emperor Heraclius is attested as using it alongside the long-established "Autokratōr Kaisar" in a letter to Kavadh II in 628. Finally, in a law promulgated on 21 March 629, the Latin titles were omitted altogether, and the simple formula , "faithful in Christ Emperor" was used instead. The adoption of the new imperial formula has been traditionally interpreted by scholars such as Ernst Stein and George Ostrogorsky as indicative of the almost complete hellenization of the Empire by that time. In imperial coinage, however, Latin forms continued to be used. Only in the reign of Leo III the Isaurian (r. 717–741) did the title "basileus" appear in silver coins, and on gold coinage only under Constantine VI (r. 780–797). "BASILEUS" was initially stamped on Byzantine coins in Latin script, and only gradually were some Latin characters replaced with Greek ones, resulting in mixed forms such as "BASIΛEVS".


title: Basileus

text: Until the 9th century, the Byzantines reserved the term "basileus" among Christian rulers exclusively for their own emperor in Constantinople. This usage was initially accepted by the "barbarian" kings of Western Europe themselves: Despite having neglected the fiction of Roman suzerainty from the 6th century onward, they refrained from adopting imperial titles.


title: Basileus

text: The situation began to change when the Western European states began to challenge the Empire's political supremacy and its right to the universal imperial title. The catalytic event was the coronation of Charlemagne as "imperator Romanorum" ("Emperor of the Romans") by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800, at St. Peter's in Rome. The matter was complicated by the fact that the Eastern Empire was then managed by Irene (r. 797–802), who had gained control after the death of her husband, the Emperor Leo IV (r. 775–780), as regent for their 9 year-old son, Constantine VI (r. 780–797). After Constantine's coming of age, Irene eventually decided to rule in her own name. In the conflict that ensued, Irene was victorious, and Constantine was blinded and imprisoned, to die soon afterward. The revulsion generated by this incident of filicide "cum" regicide was compounded by the traditional (and especially Frankish) aversion to the idea of a female sovereign. Although it is often claimed that, as monarch, Irene called herself in the male form "basileus", in fact she normally used the title "basilissa".


title: Basileus

text: The Pope would seize this opportunity to cite the imperial throne being held by a woman as vacant and establish his position as able to divinely appoint rulers. Leading up to this, Charlemagne and his Frankish predecessors had increasingly become the Papacy’s source of protection while the Byzantine’s position in Italy had weakened significantly. In 800 CE, Charlemagne, now a king of multiple territories, was proclaimed “Emperor of the Romans” by the Pope. Charlemagne's claim to the imperial title of the Romans began a prolonged diplomatic controversy which was resolved only in 812 when the Byzantines agreed to recognize him as ""basileus"", while continuing to refuse any connection with the Roman Empire. In an effort to emphasize their own Roman legitimacy, the Byzantine rulers thereafter began to use the fuller form "basileus Rhomaíōn" (, "emperor of the Romans") instead of the simple ""basileus"", a practice that continued in official usage until the end of the Empire. The title "autokratōr" was also revived by the early 9th century (and appears in coins from 912 on). It was reserved for the senior ruling emperor among several co-emperors ("symbasileis"), who exercised actual power. The term "Megas Basileus"/"Basileus Megas" ("Great Emperor") was also sometimes used for the same purpose. By the Palaiologan period, the full style of the Emperor was finalized in the phrase "X, in Christ the God faithful Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans" (, ""Χ, en Christō tō Theō pistós basileus kai autokratōr Rhōmaíōn"").


title: Basileus

text: The later German emperors were also conceded the title ""basileus" of the Franks". The Byzantine title in turn produced further diplomatic incidents in the 10th century, when Western potentates addressed the emperors as "emperors of the Greeks". A similar diplomatic controversy (this time accompanied by war) ensued from the imperial aspirations of Simeon I of Bulgaria in the early 10th century. Aspiring to conquer Constantinople, Simeon claimed the title ""basileus" of the Bulgarians and of the Romans", but was only recognized as ""basileus" of the Bulgarians" by the Byzantines. From the 12th century however, the title was increasingly, although again not officially, used for powerful foreign sovereigns, such as the kings of France or Sicily, the tsars of the restored Bulgarian Empire, the Latin emperors and the emperors of Trebizond. In time, the title was also applied to major non-Christian rulers, such as Tamerlane or Mehmed II. Finally, in 1354, Stefan Dušan, king of Serbia, assumed the imperial title, based on his Bulgarian mother's Theodora Smilets of Bulgaria royal line, self-styling himself in Greek as "basileus" and "autokratōr" of the Romans and Serbs which was, however, not recognized by the Byzantines.


title: Basileus

text: While the terms used for the Roman emperor are "Kaisar Augustos" (Decree from Caesar Augustus, Dogma para Kaisaros Augoustou, Luke 2:1) or just "Kaisar" (see Render unto Caesar...) and Pontius Pilate is termed Hegemon (Matthew 27:2), Herod is Basileus (in his coins also "Basileōs Herodou", "of King Herod", and by Josephus)


title: Basileus

text: Regarding Jesus the term basileus acquires a new Christian theological meaning out of the further concept of Basileus as a chief religious officer during the Hellenistic period. Jesus is "Basileus Basileōn" ( = King of Kings, Revelation 17:14, 19:16) (a previous Near Eastern phrase for rulers of empires), or "Basileus tōn basileuontōn" ( = literally King of those being kings, 1 Timothy 6:15). Other titles involving "Basileus" include "Basileus tōn Ouranōn", translated as "King of Heaven", with his "Basileia tōn Ouranōn", i.e. Kingship or Kingdom of Heaven, and is "Basileus tōn Ioudaiōn", i.e. King of the Jews (see INRI). In Byzantine art, a standard depiction of Jesus is "Basileus tēs Doxēs" King of Glory (in the West 'the Christ or Image of Pity'); a phrase derived from the Psalms 24:10 and the "Lord of Glory" (Kyrios tēs Doxēs, 1 Corinthians 2:8).


title: Basileus

text: During the post-Byzantine period, the term "basileus", by the renewed influence of Classical writers on the language, reverted to its earlier meaning of "king". This transformation had already begun in informal usage in the works of some classicizing Byzantine authors. In the Convention of London in 1832, the Great Powers agreed that the new Greek state should become a monarchy, and chose the Wittelsbach Prince Otto of Bavaria as its first king.


title: Basileus

text: The Great Powers furthermore ordained that his title was to be "" "Vasilefs tes Elládos", meaning "King of Greece", instead of "" "Vasilefs ton Ellénon", i.e. "King of the Greeks". This title had two implications: first, that Otto was the king only of the small Kingdom of Greece, and not of all Greeks, whose majority still remained ruled by the Ottoman Empire. Second, that the kingship did not depend on the will of the Greek people, a fact further underlined by Otto's addition of the formula "" "eléo Theou", i.e. "By the Grace (Mercy) of God". For 10 years, until the 3 September 1843 Revolution, Otto ruled as an absolute monarch, and his autocratic rule, which continued even after he was forced to grant a constitution, made him very unpopular. After being ousted in 1862, the new Danish dynasty of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg began with King George I. Both to assert national independence from the will of the Powers, and to emphasize the constitutional responsibilities of the monarch towards the people, his title was modified to "King of the Hellenes", which remained the official royal title, until the abolitions of the Greek monarchy in 1924 and 1973.


title: Basileus

text: The two Greek kings who had the name of Constantine, a name of great sentimental and symbolic significance, especially in the irredentist context of the "Megali Idea", were often, although never officially, numbered in direct succession to the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI, as Constantine XII and Constantine XIII respectively.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Theodore Edgar McCarrick (born July 7, 1930) is a laicized American bishop and former cardinal of the Catholic Church. Ordained a priest in 1958, he became an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York in 1977, then became Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, in 1981. From 1986 to 2000, he was Archbishop of Newark. He was created a cardinal in February 2001 and served as Archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006. Following credible allegations of repeated sexual misconduct towards boys and seminarians, he was removed from public ministry in June 2018, became the first cardinal to resign from the College of Cardinals because of claims of sexual abuse in July 2018, and was laicized in February 2019. Several honors he had been awarded, such as honorary degrees, were rescinded.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: A prolific fundraiser, he was connected to prominent politicians and was considered a power broker in Washington, D.C. Within the church, McCarrick was variously regarded as a moderate or as a progressive. He was active in social justice causes.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: McCarrick was accused of engaging in sexual misconduct with adult male seminarians over the course of decades. Though multiple reports about McCarrick's alleged conduct with adult seminarians were made to American bishops and the Vatican between 1993 and 2016, allegations of sexual abuse against minors were not known until 2018. In July 2018, "The New York Times" published a story detailing a pattern of sexual abuse of male seminarians and minors. After a church investigation and trial, he was found guilty of sexual crimes against adults and minors and abuse of power and dismissed from the clerical state in February 2019. He is the most senior church official in modern times to be laicized, and is the first known case of a cardinal being laicized for sexual abuse.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: The apparent lack of action from the church hierarchy in this case sparked demands for action against church leaders believed to be responsible. On October 6, 2018, the Holy See announced that Pope Francis had ordered "a thorough study of the entire documentation present in the Archives of the Dicasteries and Offices of the Holy See regarding the former Cardinal McCarrick, in order to ascertain all the relevant facts, to place them in their historical context and to evaluate them objectively". The resulting report of the Secretariat of State, published in November 2020, stated that Pope John Paul II was made aware of allegations against McCarrick but did not believe them, and that Benedict XVI, in 2005, upon learning of newly surfaced allegations, urgently sought a successor for McCarrick. The report avoided blaming Pope Francis for the scandal.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: An only child, McCarrick was born into an Irish American family in New York City to Theodore E. and Margaret T. (née McLaughlin) McCarrick. His father was a ship captain who died from tuberculosis when McCarrick was three years old, and his mother then worked at an automobile parts factory in The Bronx. As a child, McCarrick served as an altar boy at the Church of the Incarnation in Washington Heights. He was expelled from the Jesuit Xavier High School in his junior year for missing classes.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: McCarrick missed an academic year due to the expulsion, but a friend of his family was able to help get him into the Jesuit Fordham Preparatory School. At Fordham, he was elected student council president and served in the ROTC program for the United States Air Force. McCarrick studied in Switzerland for a year before returning to the United States and attending Fordham University.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: McCarrick later entered St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, from where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy (1954) and a Master of Arts in theology (1958). McCarrick is a polyglot, speaking five languages (English, French, German, Italian and Spanish).


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: McCarrick was ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Francis Spellman, Archbishop of New York, on May 31, 1958. From 1958 to 1963, he furthered his studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., earning a Ph.D. in sociology. He then served as an assistant chaplain at the Catholic University, becoming dean of students and director of development.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: McCarrick served as president of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico from 1965 to 1969, and was given the honorary title of Domestic Prelate of His Holiness in 1965. In 1969, Cardinal Terence Cooke recalled McCarrick to New York. McCarrick was an associate secretary for education and an assistant priest at Blessed Sacrament parish from 1969 to 1971. He was Cooke's secretary from 1971 to 1977. He was later accused of sexually abusing a male minor during this period.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In May 1977, McCarrick was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of New York and Titular Bishop of Rusibisir by Pope Paul VI. He received his episcopal consecration on the following June 29 from Cardinal Cooke, with Archbishop John Maguire and Bishop Patrick Ahern serving as co-consecrators. He selected as his episcopal motto: ""Come Lord Jesus"" ().


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: On November 19, 1981, McCarrick was appointed the first Bishop of the Diocese of Metuchen, New Jersey. He was installed at St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral on January 31, 1982. During his tenure, McCarrick erected new parishes in Perth Amboy, Califon, Skillman, Old Bridge, and Three Bridges. He also oversaw the development of the Diocesan Council of Catholic Women, Bishop's Annual Appeal, and ministries for blacks and Hispanics, anti-abortion activities, and the disabled.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In 2001 a Catholic high school, originally established in 1885 and renamed multiple times through the years, was named Cardinal McCarrick High School in honor of McCarrick as the first bishop of the diocese. The school closed in June 2015 for financial reasons.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: On May 30, 1986, McCarrick was appointed the fourth Archbishop of Newark. He succeeded Peter Leo Gerety, and was installed at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart on the following July 25. During his tenure, he established the Office of Evangelization, ministries for Hispanics and victims of HIV, and a drug prevention program. He also promoted vocations, and ordained a total of 200 priests for the archdiocese.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: McCarrick became known as an advocate for social justice, once saying, "[T]he Church cannot be authentic unless it takes care of the poor, the newcomers, the needy." During the 1980s, he served as an official observer to the Helsinki Commission and the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe at the behest of the State Department. In 1988, he participated in an interfaith meeting with Fidel Castro to promote religious freedom in Cuba, the first meeting of its kind subsequent to the fall of Fulgencio Batista. McCarrick, as a representative of Irish immigrant families, was chosen to be placed in the Ellis Island Hall of Fame on December 8, 1990.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Within the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), he served as chairman of the Committee on Aid to the Church in Central and Eastern Europe from 1992 to 1997. In this capacity, he visited such countries as Serbia and Montenegro, the Baltics, and Kazakhstan. He was twice elected to head the USCCB's Committee on Migration, and once asked the Congress "to recognize and support the important task of nurturing new citizens so that they may begin to play a full role in the future of this nation." He later became a member of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: He was elected chairman of the Bishops' Committee on International Policy in 1996. He visited Bosnia (which he described as "reminiscent of the Holocaust"), China, Poland, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, and Switzerland. Joined by Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, he announced an initiative in 1997 to assure that Catholic school uniforms in his archdiocese would not be manufactured in sweatshops.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In 1998, in addition to his duties as archbishop, McCarrick was designated as superior of the Roman Catholic Mission "sui iuris" of the Turks and Caicos Islands; he delegated this mission to priests of the Neocatechumenal Way.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Pope John Paul II appointed McCarrick Archbishop of Washington, D.C. in November 2000. McCarrick was formally installed as the fifth archbishop of Washington at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle on January 3, 2001. On February 21, 2001, John Paul made him a cardinal, assigning him as cardinal priest to the titular church of Santi Nereo e Achilleo. He was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In June 2004, McCarrick was accused of intentionally misreading a letter from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger recommending that Catholic politicians who supported abortion rights be denied the Eucharist. McCarrick led a successful push to have the USCCB allow the bishops of individual dioceses to determine who was or was not eligible to receive the sacrament of communion. Fr. Richard John Neuhaus said, "The bishops I have talked to have no doubt that [McCarrick's] presentation did not accurately represent the communication from Cardinal Ratzinger." McCarrick said that he did not want to cause "a confrontation with the Sacred Body of the Lord Jesus in my hand," and added that "the individual should be the one who decides whether or not he is in communion with the Church" and therefore eligible to receive the sacrament. McCarrick later met with then senator John Kerry, a Catholic and the Democratic nominee in that year's presidential election. Some Catholics felt Kerry should not have been allowed to receive Communion due to his political position favoring abortion rights.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Although McCarrick was sometimes labelled a liberal, he was noted for adhering to church teaching on abortion, same-sex marriage, and the male-only priesthood. American Catholic journalist Michael Sean Winters disputed this claim writing "Liberals embraced him as a champion of moderation at a time when the Church was seen as increasingly reactionary. I always thought he was playing to the cameras."


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: On May 16, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI accepted McCarrick's resignation as Archbishop of Washington, after the latter's reaching the customary age limit of 75, and appointed Donald Wuerl, Bishop of Pittsburgh, as the 6th Archbishop of Washington, DC. From May 16, 2006, until Wuerl's installation on June 22, 2006, McCarrick served as the Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese of Washington, an interim post.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: After his retirement, McCarrick resided for some time at the Redemptoris Mater seminary in the Archdiocese of Washington. He subsequently moved to the grounds of the provincial headquarters of the Institute of the Incarnate Word in Chillum, Maryland, in a building on a complex that included a seminary.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In 2009, McCarrick presided over the graveside service of U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery, where he read from a letter Kennedy had written to Pope Benedict XVI. In 2015, he served as one of the concelebrants at the funeral of Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, son of President Joe Biden, (then Vice President) and presided over the closing Mass as well.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Within the church, McCarrick "was always seen as a moderate, centrist presence in the hierarchy, a telegenic pastor who could present the welcoming face of the Church, no matter what the circumstances". A news article identified him in 2014 as "one of a number of senior churchmen who were more or less put out to pasture during the eight-year pontificate of Benedict XVI", adding that after the election of Pope Francis he found himself put "back in the mix." He was described as a "pope maker" by David Gibson, longtime religion reporter and author of "The Coming Catholic Church".


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: During his retirement, McCarrick pressed House Speaker John Boehner to take up immigration reform. McCarrick spent a significant amount of time traveling and engaging in inter-religious dialogue. In April 2014, at the request of the U.S. State Department, McCarrick (along with a Muslim and an Evangelical cleric) made a trip to the Central African Republic, a country suffering from ethnic and interreligious violence. In May 2014, he traveled with Pope Francis to the Holy Land. McCarrick traveled to Armenia to discuss Syria with Eastern Orthodox clerics, the Philippines to visit typhoon victims, China for discussions on religious freedom, Iran for talks on nuclear proliferation, and served as a Vatican intermediary for the U.S.-Cuba talks.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: The release of some of McCarrick's correspondences' in May 2019 indicates that he attempted to influence the selection of a United States ambassador to the Holy See. On 27 January 2017, in response to rumors President Trump was planning to appoint Catholic commentator George Weigel, McCarrick wrote to Pope Francis stating that Weigel was "very much a leader of the ultra-conservative wing of the Catholic Church in the United States and has been publicly critical of Your Holiness in the past." He added, "Many of us American bishops would have great concerns about his being named to such a position in which he would have an official voice, in opposition to your teaching." McCarrick indicated interest in discussing the topic further with the Pope, but there are no indications in their correspondence of whether he did so.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In 1994, a priest wrote a letter to Bishop Edward T. Hughes, McCarrick's successor as Bishop of Metuchen, stating that McCarrick had inappropriately touched him.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Also in 1994, Cardinal Agostino Cacciavillan, then papal nuncio to the United States, received a phone call from a woman who was concerned that there would be a media scandal if Pope John Paul II went to Newark during his 1995 visit to the United States because of "voices (rumors) about McCarrick's behavior with seminarians." Cacciavillan then told Cardinal John O'Connor, Archbishop of New York, about the woman's call. O'Connor conducted an "investigation, an inquiry" and eventually told Cacciavillan that "there was no obstacle to the visit of the Pope to Newark." Cacciavillan stated that he did not inform the Vatican. According to Italian journalists Andrea Tornielli and Gianni Valente, Cardinal O'Connor, in fact "objected strongly to John Paul II's idea of rewarding McCarrick and the diocese of Newark with a stop during his papal visit to the United States in 1995", but that John Paul's personal secretary, Msgr. Stanisław Dziwisz, was able to intercept these objections before they reached the pope. The authors suggest that this was because as bishop, McCarrick was an efficient fundraiser for the Pope's causes, including anti-Communist efforts in Poland.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Father Boniface Ramsey stated that he spoke to Thomas C. Kelly, Archbishop of Louisville, about McCarrick in 1993. In 2000, Ramsey wrote to the nuncio, Gabriel Montalvo Higuera, to complain about McCarrick's behavior. The letter was forwarded to Leonardo Sandri, the Vatican substitute for general affairs and later, a cardinal. Ramsey said that he tried to speak with Cardinal Edward Egan, then Archbishop of New York, about McCarrick's history, but that Egan "didn't want to hear it". In February 2019, the same month McCarrick was laicized by the Vatican, an image of a letter dated October 11, 2006 which Sandri sent to Ramsey, and which illustrates Ramsey's account of his involvement in the McCarrick affair, was published by the media, including in a "Commonweal" article which Ramsey himself wrote. The image showed that McCarrick's name and Archbishop status were concealed in the letter whenever Sandri mentioned it.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In 2015, Ramsey wrote to Cardinal Seán Patrick O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston, about McCarrick. O'Malley stated that he never saw the letter, and that it had been handled "at the staff level."


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Richard Sipe stated that he wrote a letter to Benedict XVI in 2008, saying that McCarrick's activities "had been widely known for several decades." Sipe sent a letter to Bishop Robert W. McElroy in 2016, concerning sexual misconduct by McCarrick. McElroy asked if Sipe would be willing to share corroborating material that would substantiate his allegations. Sipe said that he was precluded from sharing specific documentary information. McElroy said "[T]he limitations on his willingness to share corroborating information made it impossible to know what was real and what was rumor."


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Mike Kelly of the "New Jersey Record" reported that in a conversation with Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, Tobin said that around the time he became Archbishop of Newark in 2016, he heard "rumors" about McCarrick having slept with seminarians, but chose not to believe them, stating that at the time they seemed too "incredulous" to be true. Kelly also mentioned that in 1998, based on a tip, he himself had attempted to investigate the rumors, "but no seminarians would talk".


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Between 2005 and 2007, the Diocese of Metuchen and the Archdiocese of Newark paid financial settlements to two priests who had accused McCarrick of abuse. These settlements totalled $180,000.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In 2005, the Archdiocese of Newark and the Dioceses of Trenton and Metuchen paid a total of $80,000 to a former priest, who stated that McCarrick would touch him in bed, but only above the waist, and that they never kissed. The Diocese of Metuchen's contribution was not in reference to McCarrick, but to an allegation regarding previous conduct of a teacher at a high school located at that time in the diocese.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In 2006, $100,000 was paid by the Diocese (where McCarrick had been bishop from 1981 to 1986). The payments were authorized by Metuchen bishop Paul G. Bootkoski, who also reported the offenses to law enforcement. According to Donald Cardinal Wuerl, McCarrick's successor as Archbishop of Washington, nobody from these dioceses informed him of these settlements, even after the retired McCarrick began living on the grounds of a seminary in the Archdiocese of Washington. In 2010, Sipe published excerpts from the 2005 and 2007 settlement documents.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Between 2001 and 2006, McCarrick gave $600,000 to high-ranking church officials, including two popes, multiple priests, cardinals and archbishops, when he was Archbishop of Washington. According to "The Washington Post", "Several of the more than 100 recipients were directly involved in assessing misconduct claims against McCarrick". Some of those recipients, however, including both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, had little oversight over these transactions.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In February 2020, "America" magazine revealed that the Diocese of Metuchen, the Archdiocese of Newark, and Diocese of Trenton had, beginning in 2005, worked together to secretly pay victims of McCarrick. Former substitute for general affairs at the Secretariat of State, Leonardo Sandri, who received the letter of concern from Ramsey in 2000, was suspected of participating in the cover-up of McCarrick's acts, and "America" journalist Thomas J. Reese recommended that he and others be interviewed as part of the Vatican's investigation into the former cardinal.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In 2018, multiple media outlets reported a number of priests and former seminarians under McCarrick had come forward alleging that McCarrick had engaged in inappropriate conduct with seminarians. These included reports that he made sexual advances toward seminarians during his tenure as Bishop of Metuchen and Archbishop of Newark. McCarrick reportedly routinely invited a number of seminarians to a house on the shore with limited sleeping accommodations, resulting in one of them sharing a bed with the bishop. According to former seminarian Desmond Rossi, he and a friend later realized that the archbishop would cancel weekend gatherings "if there were not enough men going that they would exceed the number of available beds, thus necessitating one guest to share a bed with the archbishop". Rossi subsequently transferred before ordination from the Archdiocese of Newark to a diocese in New York State.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Wuerl denied having any prior knowledge of claims regarding sexual abuse on the part of McCarrick. On January 10, 2019, "The Washington Post" published a story stating that Wuerl was aware of allegations against McCarrick in 2004 and reported them to the Vatican. In a January 12, 2019 letter, Wuerl stated that when "the allegation of sexual abuse of a minor was brought against Archbishop McCarrick, I stated publicly that I was never aware of any such allegation or rumors." But the context, he said, was in discussions about sexual abuse of minors, not adults. He later said in a letter dated January 15 to the priests of the archdiocese that the survivor in the previous Pittsburgh case had asked that the matter be kept confidential, and he heard no more about it: "I did not avert to it again," and "only afterwards was I reminded of the 14-year-old accusation of inappropriate conduct which, by that time, I had forgotten."


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In August 2019, letters and postcards that McCarrick sent to his alleged victims were made public. Two abuse prevention experts who reviewed the letters and postcards for the Associated Press described the correspondence as "a window into the way a predator grooms his prey."


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In 2013, Scottish cardinal Keith O'Brien, who was accused of sexual misconduct in the 1980s, resigned as Archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh, and left Scotland in disgrace for "months of "prayer and penance", although not defrocked or stripped of his cardinalate. He was the first sexually predatory Catholic cardinal whose case was dealt with publicly. The O'Brien case forced accountability and discussion of such cases on the Catholic Church, and Rome was forced to create a process. In a telephone interview about O'Brien at the time, Richard Sipe said that O'Brien was not the only case: "We have someone here too. It will go public soon." He was referring to McCarrick.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In 2021, Brian Devlin, one of O'Brien's victims who later left the priesthood, waived anonymity to publish a book, "Cardinal Sin", about his experiences and his fight for improved church governance and accountability.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: According to Devlin, O'Brien's and McCarrick's cases were linked: "If we hadn't gone to "the Observer" [UK newspaper] back then, the church would have dealt with McCarrick quite differently. Without O'Brien, there would be no church process."


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: On June 20, 2018, McCarrick was removed from public ministry by the Holy See, after a review board of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York found an allegation "credible and substantiated" that he had sexually abused a 16-year-old altar boy while a priest in New York. Patrick Noaker, the attorney for the anonymous complainant, alleged two incidents at St. Patrick's Cathedral, one in 1971 and the other in 1972. Noaker stated that when measuring the teen for a cassock, McCarrick "unzipped [the boy's] pants and put his hands in the boy's pants." McCarrick stated that he was innocent of these charges: "I have absolutely no recollection of this reported abuse, and believe in my innocence." He also stated, "In obedience I accept the decision of The Holy See, that I no longer exercise any public ministry." Also on June 20, 2018, Cardinal Tobin revealed that during McCarrick's ministry in New Jersey, there had been accusations of sexual misconduct with three adults, and that two of the allegations had resulted in confidential financial settlements with the complainants.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: On July 5, 2018, Fordham University rescinded an honorary degree and other honors it had granted McCarrick. The Catholic University of America, where McCarrick earned two degrees and served in a variety of spiritual and administrative positions, also revoked the honorary degree it had awarded him in 2006. On July 16, 2018, "The New York Times" published a front-page article describing McCarrick's abuse of adult seminarians. On July 19, "The New York Times" published an article based on the story of a man named James, whose last name was withheld. A New Jersey man whose uncle had known McCarrick since high school, James alleged that McCarrick had sexually abused him beginning at age 11. James had been the first boy McCarrick had ever baptized. James said that McCarrick had exposed himself to him when he was 11 and had sexually touched him beginning when he was 13. He explained that he tried to tell his father a couple of years later but was not believed. On November 13, James revealed himself as James Grein, and gave a public speech at the "Silence Stops Now Rally" in Baltimore, where he called on Catholics to "reform and reclaim the Church." Speaking about alleged mishandling of allegations by Catholic bishops, he said, "Our bishops must know that the jig is up."


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: On July 27, 2018, Pope Francis ordered McCarrick to observe "a life of prayer and penance in seclusion" and accepted his resignation from the College of Cardinals, the first resignation since Louis Billot, a French prelate, resigned in 1927 when he refused an order to withdraw his support of Action Française, a monarchist movement that Pope Pius XI had condemned. He is also the first cardinal to resign following allegations of sexual abuse. The Pope took this action before the accusations were investigated by church officials, the first time an order of penance and prayer has been issued before a church trial. McCarrick was not laicized (removed from the priesthood) at the time, pending the completion of a canonical trial. The Holy See announced on July 28, 2018, that Pope Francis had ordered Archbishop McCarrick (as he then became known) to obey an "obligation to remain in a house yet to be indicated to him" and also observe "a life of prayer and penance until the accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial."


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In December 2019, McCarrick was sued by a man named John Bellocchio, who said that McCarrick sexually abused him when he was a 14-year-old boy in the 1990s.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: On August 25, 2018, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, released an 11-page letter describing a series of warnings to the Vatican regarding McCarrick. Viganò stated that Montalvo, then nuncio to the United States, had informed the Vatican in 2000 of what Viganò characterized as McCarrick's "gravely immoral behaviour with seminarians and priests." He further stated that Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the nuncio from 2005 to 2011, had also informed the Vatican. Viganò says that in 2006 – when working at the Vatican – he wrote his own memo regarding McCarrick. However, he says, nothing was done to stop McCarrick. In 2008, Viganò says he wrote a second memo, including material from Sipe.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: In 2009 or 2010, according to Viganò, Pope Benedict XVI placed severe restrictions on McCarrick's movements and public ministry, not allowing him to travel beyond the grounds of the seminary where he was living and not permitting him to say Mass in public. However, according to Viganò, Pope Francis subsequently removed these sanctions and made McCarrick "his trusted counselor", even though Francis "knew from at least June 23, 2013 that McCarrick was a serial predator. He knew that he was a corrupt man, he covered for him to the bitter end."


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: However, Italian journalists Tornielli and Valente report that "it was in 2007 – not 2009, as Viganò has said – that Pope Benedict XVI issued his 'instructions' to McCarrick." McCarrick responded in a 2008 letter to Vatican Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, writing that he had shared his bed with seminarians. He said that "this was never done in secret or behind closed doors," and that he had never "had sexual relations with anyone, man, woman or child, nor have I ever sought such acts." Having given his explanation, the Archbishop then proceeded to largely ignore the Pope's instructions.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Viganò called on Pope Francis and all others who he said covered up McCarrick's conduct to resign. It was observed that during the time McCarrick was allegedly under sanction, he maintained a "robust public presence" full of international travel, public masses, speeches, and the acceptance of awards, although in July 2010, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, he declined an interview with "The Washington Post". The reporter said that the Cardinal seemed to be avoiding the media. Both Cardinal Marc Ouellet, having been asked to come forward in 2018 by Viganò, and the "2020 Vatican Report on McCarrick" largely confirmed Viganò's statements that the Vatican under Benedict XVI imposed restrictions on McCarrick, although McCarrick proved often unwilling to follow them. The report also found that Viganò actively sought harsh sanctions for McCarrick while working as an official in the Secretariat of State. However, both Oullet and the report disputed Viganò's accusations against Francis, with the report admitting only that Francis heard of rumors about sexual impropriety by McCarrick but believed them to be discredited, and did not hear reports about abuse of minors until 2018.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: Viganò stated that he discussed McCarrick's conduct and the penalties surrounding it with McCarrick's successor as Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Wuerl, who he says transgressed the Pope's order by allowing McCarrick to continue living at the seminary and therefore putting other seminarians at risk. Wuerl, through his spokesperson, Ed McFadden, denied that he was aware of any restrictions on McCarrick. "Archbishop Vigano presumed that Wuerl had specific information that Wuerl did not have," McFadden said. McCarrick's situation reportedly became easier when Nuncio Pietro Sambi died unexpectedly in July 2011 and was succeeded by Viganò, who, according to Tornielli and Valente, proved less eager to enforce Benedict XVI's instructions to McCarrick. Viganò subsequently acknowledged that Pope Benedict had made the restrictions private, perhaps "due to the fact that he (Archbishop McCarrick) was already retired, maybe due to the fact that he (Pope Benedict) was thinking he was ready to obey."


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: The McCarrick case, along with the conclusion of the Grand jury investigation of Catholic Church sexual abuse in Pennsylvania, which alleged systematic cover-up of clergy sex abuse by bishops in Pennsylvania over decades, triggered a general call from Catholics across ideological boundaries for greater accountability and transparency in the church. However, these issues, in particular the Vigano allegations, have also escalated tensions in the Catholic Church between ideological liberals and conservatives, especially over the possible role of homosexuality in clergy sex abuse and the alleged complicity of Pope Francis in protecting McCarrick.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: On May 28, 2019, McCarrick's private secretary, Msgr. Anthony J. Figueiredo, released letters written by McCarrick suggesting that while senior Vatican officials placed restrictions on the former Cardinal after abuse allegations surfaced, they were not official sanctions and were not strictly enforced under the papacies of either Pope Benedict XVI or Pope Francis. In an interview published on May 28, 2019, Francis directly addressed the accusations made in Viganò's letter for the first time. He stated that he "knew nothing" about McCarrick's conduct. McCarrick claimed to have discussed restrictions that were placed on him with Wuerl, but Wuerl denied that he had any knowledge of such restrictions.


title: Theodore McCarrick

text: On September 28, 2018, it was announced that McCarrick had moved to the Capuchin St. Fidelis Friary in Victoria, Kansas, the day before. The announcement was unpopular with many of the citizens of Victoria, especially because the friary is near an elementary school. Before McCarrick was laicized, the Archdiocese of Washington was paying a little over $500 a month for his lodging. After he was laicized, the archdiocese stopped the payments, and the friary stated that it would not be receiving remuneration from McCarrick or the local Roman Catholic Diocese of Salina for McCarrick's stay, even though McCarrick offered to pay.