URL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-politics-bannon-catholics/steve-bannon-drafting-curriculum-for-right-wing-catholic-institute-in-italy-idUSKCN1LU176

DATE/ AUTHOR 2018-09-14 10:16:28+00:00	AUTHORS: Mark Hosenball, Min Read

H Steve Bannon drafting curriculum for right-wing Catholic institute in Italy

S1 (Reuters) - Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon is helping to craft the curriculum for a leadership course at a right-wing Roman Catholic institute in Italy, stepping up his efforts to influence conservative thinking in the church.

S2 FILE PHOTO: Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon gestures as he speaks during a conference held by Swiss weekly magazine Die Weltwoche in Zurich, Switzerland, March 6, 2018.
S3 REUTERS/Moritz Hager/File Photo

S4 Benjamin Harnwell, director of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute based in a mountaintop monastery not far from Rome, told Reuters Bannon had been helping to build up the institute for about half of its eight-year life.

S5 Cardinal Raymond Burke, a leading Vatican conservative who is president of the Institute’s board of advisers, said Bannon would be playing a leading role there.

S6 Burke told Reuters he looked forward to working with Harnwell and Bannon “to promote a number of projects that should make a decisive contribution to the defense of what used to be called Christendom”.

S7 Bannon’s increased engagement with the Institute demonstrates how his involvement in Europe extends beyond electoral politics to an effort to build a populist faction inside the Catholic Church.

S8 Bannon told Reuters this week that after Nov. 6 Congressional elections in the United States, he will spend “80-90 percent” of his time in Europe building up his Brussels-based populist “Movement”.

S9 Bannon, who has visited the Institute’s home at the 800-year-old Monastery of Trisulti and addressed the organization by video link, is helping to draw up the coursework for a training program for conservative Catholic political activists and leaders, Harnwell said.

S10 Bannon is also raising funds for the institute in both Europe and the United States, he added.
S11 The institute has set “very high academic standards”, Harnwell said.

S12 Harnwell, a former European Parliament staffer, also is advising Bannon on his campaign to build a populist Movement across Europe that will support far-right parties in next year’s European Parliament elections, he and Bannon said.

S13 Bannon and the Vatican did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this story.

S14 EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

S15 Harnwell said he founded the institute while working as an aide to a British Conservative European Parliament member.
S16 At the time, one of the legislature’s committees was trying to block Rocco Buttiglione, a confidant of Pope John Paul II, from becoming European Commissioner for justice and security.

S17 During a confirmation hearing, Buttiglione, who was nominated to the European Commission by then-Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, described homosexuality as a sin and said the principal role of women was to have children.
S18 Amid political uproar, Buttiglione withdrew from consideration for the Commission.

S19 Harnwell said Buttiglione was a “founding patron” of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, whose mission he described as “defending the Judeo-Christian tradition” and promoting “human dignity based on the image of God”.
S20 Harnwell added: “If you don’t have a culture of religious principle, we no longer have a credible basis for life.”

S21 Buttiglione, who described himself as a convinced pro-European, said there were some differences between him and Harnwell.
S22 “I am interested in a cultural dialogue with the so-called Populists but I am not one of them and, first and foremost, I am a Catholic and I stand by the pope,” he said in statement to Reuters.

S23 Harnwell said the Institute was setting up two training programs: a leadership course that Bannon is helping to design, which Harnwell described a an “academy for the Judeo-Christian West”, and the Cardinal Martino Academy, named after a former papal ambassador to the United Nations, which will promote pro-life Catholic social teachings.

S24 RABBLE-ROUSING

S25 Bannon, a rabble-rousing conservative media entrepreneur and activist popular with Trump’s base, was fired from the White House a year ago, but the former adviser remained a Trump ally.

S26 Bannon returned to the right-wing Breitbart News website, which he had headed before running Trump’s presidential campaign.
S27 In January, Bannon quit as Breitbart’s executive chairman after angering Trump by harshly criticizing his eldest son.

S28 Leaving Breitbart threatened Bannon’s dream of leading a new political movement that supports his “America First” agenda of tougher trade deals and immigration laws.

S29 Harnwell said the Institute expects to present its first courses next year.
S30 The monastery is large enough to accommodate 250-300 students at a time.

S31 Burke, the former Archbishop of St. Louis, has been a leading light at the Institute since 2013 and is an outspoken critic of some policies of Pope Francis.

S32 Since Francis’ election in 2013, Burke has led the charge by conservatives who have sharply criticized the pope, saying he has left many faithful confused by pronouncements that the church should be more welcoming to homosexuals and divorced Catholics and not be obsessed by “culture war” issues such as abortion.

S33 Burke is president of the Institute’s “advisory board”, Harnwell said.
S34 The cardinal has condemned Islam as a threat to the West, a position that strongly parallels one of the principal political campaign themes of both Bannon and Trump.

S35 In 2014, Pope Francis removed Burke as chief of the Vatican’s Supreme Court, the Apostolic Signatura, and demoted him to become patron of the Order of Malta, a charitable organization.

S36 FILE PHOTO: Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke attends a consistory as Pope Francis elevates five Roman Catholic prelates to the rank of cardinal, at Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, June 28, 2017.
S37 REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi/File Photo

S38 Bannon is in “communication” regularly with Burke, although Harnwell acknowledges that the three-times divorced Bannon “doesn’t pretend to be a model Catholic”.
S39 Harnwell said the institute itself “takes no view on the pope” or his policies.

S40 Burke has met several times with Matteo Salvini, Italy’s far-right deputy prime minister, Harnwell said.
S41 Earlier this summer, Salvini ordered Italian ports to stop allowing landings of ships carrying refugees fleeing Middle East strife.

S42 After meeting Bannon in Rome last weekend, Salvini announced that he was joining the populist Movement Bannon was setting up aimed at disrupting the European Union.

