The conference in Ontario is billed as "Fatima: The Path to Peace" but it features New World Order conspiracy theorists, holocaust deniers, racists, and an openly fascist speaker. (Video below.) Former U.S Congressman Ron Paul will keynote the week-long international summit to be held in September at Niagara Falls, Ontario. Paul is accustomed to sharing the stage with conspiracy theorists – John Birchers, Christian Reconstructionists, and Neoconfederates – but this time it's the international summit of a radical Catholic traditionalist organization. The Fatima Crusaders not only reject the reforms of Vatican II, but also teach that the Vatican is in collusion with the United Nations to form a one-world government. This article includes short bios of some of the scheduled speakers and video of one of them rallying a crowd in Europe against homosexuals and Jews.

The organization's adherents share the belief of apocalyptic-minded Protestants and secular conspiracy theorists that the United States is being punished for its disobedience to God and descent into Marxism. The Fatima Crusaders believe that the world can be saved from destruction if the request revealed by the Virgin Mary to three Portuguese children in Fatima in 1917 can be fulfilled – a mandate to "consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary." A 64-page publication on the conference explains the Fatima Center's mandate and includes bios of the speakers.

One of the speaker's participating in the widely advertised international summit is Roberto Fiore, leader of Forza Nuova or National Front, an Italian far right party. Fiore, a mentor to British National Party's Nick Griffin, is self-described as a neofascist. His party is opposed to immigration, abortion, homosexuality, and capitalism. It's working for the "recovery of Christian religiosity" and to repeal the Mancino and Scelba laws which ban symbols, slogans, and gestures of Italian fascism and Nazism.

In the video embedded below, Fiore is rallying a crowd in Budapest against Jews and gays. Fiore had been invited by the HVIM, a racist and nationalist Hungarian organization, to speak at the 2008 commemoration of the anniversary of Hungary's 1956 uprising against communism. The transcript is below the video. The statements in English by Fiore are repeated by a Hungarian interpreter.

"And these are the same people who are trying to push gay rights, who are trying to push homosexuality, who are trying to push the destruction of the nation. And I here that this year you have opposed the gay march as in 2000 we opposed the gay march in Rome that tried to march near the Vatican, just to insult Jesus Christ and Christian civilization. This is the financial capitalism that is pushing thousands and millions towards poverty but it's led and it's directed from the same people who put Christ on the cross. But it's also fact that as in Italy, as in Hungary, it will be the people who will actually destroy this attempt to kill our nation and our civilization."

Fiore is not the only extremist speaking at the Fatima Center event. Some media sources reporting on the upcoming conference have mistakenly described it as including one anti-Semitic speaker, but the slate is filled with authors of virulent Judeophobic media. The host and leader of the Fatima Center, Father Nicholas Gruner, is described by SPLC as attending Holocaust denial conferences and the center's media has defended Holocaust deniers. Other speakers include:

Mario Borghezio, a Northern League (Lega Nord) Euro-MP known for blaming the mass killings by Anders Breivik on "multi-racial society" and for slurs about Italy's first black government minister. Borghezio was convicted in Italy of arson for setting fire to pallets of sleeping migrants. Robert Sungenis, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of the most "open anti-Semites in the entire radical traditionalist movement" has deniedthat six million Jews could have been killed in the Holocaust. John Vennari, head of Catholic Family News and author of The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, a booklet claiming that Jewish masons have been invading the Catholic church since the 1700s. As noted by the SPLC, Vennari's CFN conference vendors have marketed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Hilaire Belloc's The Jews. Michael Matt, editor of The Remnant, a publishing arm of the radical traditionalist movement. According to the SPLC, The Remnant is source of numerous articles attacking Masons, Jews, and others, including a 2005 series by Sungenis titled "The New World Order and the Zionist Connection." John McManus, president of the John Birch Society (JBS) William F. Jasper, senior editor of the JBS magazine New American G. Edward Griffin, described in his bios as "the pre-eminent anti-NWO scholar," author of The Creature from Jekyll Islandclaiming a Rothschild/Federal Reserve conspiracy and endorsed by Ron Paul. Griffin claims cancer continues because of a conspiracy of the pharmaceutical and medical world and that the Council of Foreign Relations engineers control of the world with only 4000 people. Barbara Skurnowicz, Eagle Forum's "National Leader for Vaccine Information" and warrior against mandatory vaccinations. John Salza, columnist at The Remnant newspaper and author of Masonry Unmasked, Why Catholics Can't Be Masons. Christopher Ferrara, lawyer for parents of Terri Schiavo and co-author with Thomas E. Woods, Jr. of The Great Facade: Vatican II and the Regime of Novelty in the Roman Catholic Church. The book was published in 2002 by The Remnant Press, the publishing arm of the "counterrevolution" of traditionalists. Cornelia Ferreira, author of books warning about a "Masonic New World Order" conspiracy of Illuminati, environmentalists, feminists, and evolutionists.

The host of the conference is the Fatima Center, one of the organizations described as radical Catholic traditionalist groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for their promotion of anti-Semitic and other conspiracy narratives. The SPLC is careful to isolate and distinguish these 12 organizations from the larger body of traditionalist Catholics who reject the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Most of the Catholic speakers at the conference are affiliated with organizations that are included in SPLC'sreport on the "dirty dozen" and more information can be found there on many of the speakers.

The conference is hosted by Father Nicholas Gruner's Fatima Center, advertised as "the largest Fatima apostolate" in the world, and by the Archbishop Emeritus of Cuddalore and Pondicherry, India. Gruner's standing in the Roman Catholic Church is challenged and he is not considered part of his local Catholic diocese and therefore claims to have legitimacy through Catholic hierarchy in India. The Fatima Crusaders teach that the idea of separation of Church and state "is a falsehood introduced by the enemies of the Church, the Freemasons" and that "no true Catholic can promote the false anti-God idea of separation of Church and state."

This is not the first time that Ron Paul and the John Birch Society have teamed up with the Fatima Center's Nicholas Gruner and other radical Catholic traditionalists.

Update:

This past week Canadian politicians have distanced themselves from the upcoming Fatima Center conference. "Defence Minister Rebuffs Anti-Semitic Conference" announced a Canadian Broadcast Corporation headline. Defence Minister Rob Nicholson told the CBC that he had never endorsed the event, contrary to claims in Fatima Center promotional media. CBC had reported earlier in the week that Canadian Senator RomÃ©o Dallaire dropped out of the Fatima Center event, expressing his embarassment that a mixup led to him being scheduled as a speaker. The CBC quoted his personal secretary as saying, "There is absolutely no way that General Dallaire would be associated with these speakers." Dallaire had been used in promotional media including a billboard at the U.S. and Canadian border featuring him and Ron Paul, keynote speaker for the event's September 11 gala dinner.

See a previous Talk2action article with a partial list and short biographical information for speakers scheduled for the summit of the schismatic Catholic organization. A Fatima Center representative told the CBC that the organization was in no way anti-Semitic and was the victim of "guilt by association." However, the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the Fatima Center as one of the "dirty dozen" of overtly anti-Semitic traditionalist Catholic organizations. In the case of the Fatima Center, overtly anti-Semitic may be an understatement. Talk2action's Bruce Wilson has provided easy access for readers to examples of media produced by the Fatima Center's founder and leading priests over a two-decade period, including narratives of a a "New World Order"conspiracy led by Jews and claims that this Judeo-Masonic conspiracy is an effort toexterminate the human race. The Fatima Center and other Society of St. Pius X groups are a radicalized sector of a schismatic movement that rejects Vatican II and promotes the conspiracy theory that today's Roman Catholic Church and hierarchy have been corrupted by Jewish influence. See the SPLC's list of 12 of the most radicalized groups and related entities in the U.S. The Fatima Center is in Ontario, Canada. The founder of the Fatima Center, Father Nicholas Gruner, told another news outlet that he was not anti-Semitic but is skeptical that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. The article was titled "Fatima Center Head Denies Anti-Semitism, Questions Holocaust." As noted in previous Talk2action.org articles, the event includes an array of conspiracy theorists and is to be keynoted on September 11 by former U.S. Congressman Ron Paul. Also speaking are John McManus, president of the John Birch Society and William F. Jasper, senior editor of the JBS publication New American. John McManus' presentation is titled "We're Being Led to a One World Government and a One World Religion." The CBC reports that one of the Italian speakers, self-described neofascist Roberto Fiore, has also withdrawn from the conference. It's not clear that Fiore would have been allowed to enter Canada considering his past criminal conviction in Italy. Fiore's was listed in the program as speaking about "Masonry in European Politics."

RomÃ©o Dallaire seemed like an unlikely speaker for the Fatima Center event and this scheduled slate of speakers. The conference includes numerous speakers who denounce the United Nations as part of their New World Order conspiracy narrative and as part of a one-world government plot. Retired Lt. Gen. Dallaire was commander of the U.N. forces in Rwanda in 1993 and 1994 and founder of the Will to Intervene (W21) project at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies.