God’s Rottweiler and Panzer Kardinal are the sobriquets which won Joseph Ratzinger the papacy. He earned them by squelching not only internal dissent but also Liberation Theology, a movement in Latin America among the clergy and the vowed religious to help the poor. "'There are those who fear that the religious are becoming radicalized, that we will become extremists, siding with the poor and against the rich,’ Sister Maria Evangelina Villafuerte, provincial superior of the Institute of Maria Reparadora in Mexico” said in 1991.
So there should be little surprise when American women religious are censured for supporting health care reform and showing little interest in the Church’s campaigns against women’s health and same sex marriage. In addition, history shows that the more reactionary the pope, the greater the increase in his coffers.
When Pius IX declared himself a martyr by the new democratically elected Italian government in 1870, Americans gave more generously. But when Leo XIII (1878-1903) tried to reconcile the Church and the Italian Republic, many monarchist Catholics reduced their contributions. And when the same pope sought to impose the Ralliement – an attempt to heal the church-state rift in 1880s France – contributions to the Vatican from that country dropped noticeably. Pius X’s (1903-1914) open disputes with secular governments such as France, Spain and Portugal stimulated the wealthy into giving more generously. Similarly, his disputes with the Czarist government in 1907 and his refusal to give an audience to ex-president Theodore Roosevelt because of the latter's desire to visit Masonic and Methodist organizations in Rome also brought financial benefits. Following this pope’s encyclical in 1907 against Modernism there was a massive increase in contributions from various geographical areas.
The above information is from John E. Pollard’s Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: Financing the Vatican, 1850-1950 (Cambridge University Press 2005). Unfortunately, after 1950 the type of records to which Pollard had access are no longer available to outsiders. We do, however, know that Pope Benedict’s American surrogates who tied abolishing insurance coverage for contraception to “religious liberty” were supported by the presidential candidates and dozens of members of Congress and states’ attorneys-general who represent the corporatocracy.
The pope should care about what people think about the nuns because independent voters may resent the Catholic Church’s war against women enough to vote Democrat. While Benedict and the other plutocrats might be confident that campaign money alone - provided by the Citizens United decision of loyal-to-the-Vatican Supreme Court justices – can win elections as they did the primaries for Romney – the only presidential candidate endorsed by Catholic officials, the Occupy Wall Street and Arab Spring movements should be a warning that there is still power in the truth.