The Church's Questionable Contributors (editorial)

November 8th, 2038: 
Conspire Magazine (editorial)
The Guardian Church's Questionable Contributors - 
Whenever the Guardian Church hosts a charity or community event, they go to great lengths to make sure there is a strong media presence. It seems that the Chapters can't feed the hungry, or house the homeless without a dozen news crews standing by, ready to document each momentous event. I think I personally reached my breaking point when I turned on the evening news last night, only to be bombarded with a 'breaking story' of a Guardian Church member who rescued a kitten that was stuck in a tree. 
Why do these harmless, human interest stories irk me so much, you ask? Why can't I just sit back unperturbed like the rest of the world, and applaud the Guardian Church for their generous, humanitarian actions? It's not that I'm a grouchy old misanthrope with no sense of compassion, but if I have one "hot button" topic that really gets me going, it's hypocrisy - and on this topic, the Guardian Church is waist-deep in it.
Let's start with the long list of Guardian Church members who have ties to organized crime, and who use their ill-begotten gains to finance Church activities. I would like to point out that while the Guardian Church makes no attempts to conceal this information, which is all accessible to the public, it receives absolutely no media attention (save for our curious little publication). Meanwhile, there always seems to be a camera crew ready and waiting every time Timmy falls down a well and a Church member is conveniently poised to rescue him... I digress.
Starting from the bottom, we have the infamous John DiFronzo Jr, alleged head of the Chicago Outfit. In between incarcerations, DiFronzo can be found rubbing shoulders with the Church elites at the Chicago Headway meetings. DiFronzo has personally donated $2,000,000 to the Guardian Church this year alone, and this doesn't even begin to cover the potential donations of the other Outfit affiliates who attend meetings with him. His contributions have been consistent and plentiful over the years, but he's small potatoes compared to what's happening overseas.
Despite this age of unrivalled peace, the UK is still plagued by the criminal activities of the Irish-bred Clerkenwell crime syndicate (a.k.a. the Adams Family or "A-Team") as the leading illegal organization in the country. Almost the entire group, which is predominantly family-oriented, are members of the Guardian Church, and they are not shy about their associations. Seamus Adams, nephew and current heir to the Adams Family throne, has put up thousands of his own funds to further Church activities across the world, and even participated in a hostel-building project in Xalapa, Mexico. (We'll just ignore the fact that at the same time he was allegedly brokering a deal with Mexican drug cartels.) Outside of the family connections, over 100 Guardian Church members in the UK have ties in one form or another to Clerkenwell businesses.
From the UK connection back to the Americas, and along the Clerkenwell chain, we come to the Guardian Church's next big contributor - Los Rastrojos. The group is said to be the largest supplier of drugs in Columbia, with ties to many international syndicates, including the Adams Family. Breaking from the patriarchal traditions of the past, the head of the Los Rastrojos syndicate is currently Filipina Henao Barrera, known affectionately to her underlings as "La reina loca" or, "The crazy Queen." Queen Filipina is not someone anyone in Colombia wants to mess with, so when she insists that her business meetings be held in the security of the Church's Colombian headquarters, you better be sure that you know your way around it. In the haze and confusion of Colombia's current politics, it's rather unclear as to who funds who, but you can be sure that the Church and Los Rastrojos are intimately intertwined. 
If those associations don't give you pause, just wait 'til we get to Asia. In the past two decades a lot has changed in the Pan-Asian crime scene. In an unprecedented movement towards solidarity, almost 90% of all triad and yakuza groups now operate under the larger, swelling umbrella organization of the Long Dragon Syndicate. Not only is the LDS the single largest criminal entity still operating in the world, it is also the largest contributor to the Guardian Church, with an estimated $700,000,000 being donated from LDS members per year. Let me repeat that for effect: Seven Hundred Million. This dwarfs any other donations from legitimate, legal sources in the Church's public financial dossier. 
It seems contradictory, in the very least, for an organization that promotes such high ideals of altruism and philanthropy, to turn around and accept assistance from groups who are known for their brutality, violence and general indecency. It seems to me, that if the Church is going to be committed to improving the quality of life for all humanity, then it ought to sever its ties with groups which clearly run contrary to this aim. Of course that would mean shrinking their budget considerably, and maybe having a few less donuts to pass around at Headway meetings... But I seem to remember one famous carpenter who managed to feed a lot of people with very little resources, and he did it while sticking to his values. If the Guardian Children want a true and honorable Church, maybe they could take a page out of his good ol' book?
Category:Conspire Magazine
Category:John DiFronzo Jr
Category:Chicago Outfit
Category:Clerkenwell
Category:Xalapa
Category:Los Rastrojos
Category:Filipina Henao Barrera
Category:Long Dragon Syndicate
Category:Guardian Church