‘U.K. grand lodges in the news this week’

    

Cheers to the media relations teams at both the grand lodges of England and Scotland, and to The Times, for their respective collaborations that produced fair news coverage of the Craft in the United Kingdom in recent days.

The Times, founded in 1785, self-identifies as “the oldest national daily newspaper in the U.K. and holds an important place as the ‘paper of record’ on public life, from politics and world affairs to business and sport.” The United Grand Lodge of England and the Grand Lodge of Scotland self-identify as two of the oldest Masonic grand bodies in the world. The former says it dates to 1717 (although it’s actually 1813) and the latter was established in 1736.

Sunday Times

Unfortunately, there is a template in media coverage that cannot evolve: The Freemasons are opening their doors to the public for the first time to show there’s nothing to hide. In fact, the headline on the Sunday Times story by Marc Horne this week reads: “‘Nothing to hide’: freemasons to welcome public for first time.” Yesterday’s package from Times Radio lures us with “Inside the Freemasons HQ: The secretive society accused of ‘ruling the world.’”

To the reporters’ credit though, their work goes beyond the tease, and I think everyone can be pleased with the reportage.

The Scotland story seems to have been sparked by publicity of a jurisdiction-wide “open house,” in which all of the Grand Lodge of Scotland’s member lodges worldwide will, you know, “welcome members of the public for the first time” next February. The report from London, as you’ll see in the video, is thanks to Grand Secretary Adrian Marsh’s enterprising invitation to Darryl Morris to visit Freemasons’ Hall on Great Queen Street for a look around and a friendly, but firm, denial that Masons are reptilian.

Click here for the Scotland story. Click the image at top to see the Times Radio piece. (I assume the almost simultaneous publishing of the reports is coincidental.)

I know I post often on things Masonic in the U.K.—maybe too often—but, being from Publicity Lodge, this kind of thing excites me.

     

‘The Times (London): Mafia’s enthusiastic participation in Freemasonry’

     
Freemasons in the United States, and probably the rest of the English-speaking Masonic world also, have an enormous blind spot when it comes to the doings of lodges and grand lodges around the world, and how those entities are perceived by the local public. Not the fake stuff; those usually are too secretive to give up any kind of accounting of their activities. I’m talking about established Freemasonry—the bodies that have stood the test of time, and that might enjoy relations with your grand lodges.

The following is Copyright © The Times, December 27, 2017.

Mafia join Italy’s freemasons

to ‘do deals’ with judiciary

Strong links between Italy’s secretive freemasons and the mafia have been exposed by police raids, with 193 crime bosses found to be members of lodges in Calabria and Sicily.

The investigation has confirmed long-standing accusations by magistrates and mob turncoats that freemason lodges in southern Italy are often venues for secret deals with corrupt judges, politicians and business owners.

The mafia’s enthusiastic participation in freemasonry “has led some to believe that the two have become one and the same,” according to a report this month from an anti-mafia parliamentary commission. Masons were “acquiescent” and “tolerant” of the takeover, it added.

The raids were ordered after the heads of Italy’s four main freemasonry orders refused to hand over their membership lists. “It was impossible to get them to collaborate,” said Davide Mattiello, a member of the commission. “Mobsters are joining the masons to meet people who hold power. We need to know how aware of this the masons are.”

The commission’s call for masons to make their secret membership lists public was contested by Stefano Bisi, grand master of the Grande Oriente d’Italia, the biggest order in southern Italy. “The order is ready to defend its sacrosanct right to existence and to maintain the privacy of its members,” he said.

The synergy is reputedly most intense in two towns in western Sicily, Castelvetrano and Trapani, where masons have allegedly helped the mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro to stay on the run for 24 years. Mob-masonry ties are also strong in Calabria, where the local mafia sends members of its top tier committee to do business at lodge meetings, the commission said. In Locri, a Calabrian town notorious for its ties to organized crime, 18 out of 75 members of a local lodge were linked to the mafia.

The report said that the mafia felt at home in the masonry because the organizations shared a passion for keeping secrets and holding ritual ceremonies.

National elections are to be held in March and after that a new anti-mafia parliamentary commission will be appointed. “We only checked in Sicily and Calabria. I hope the next commission will check lodges throughout Italy, because mob infiltration is likely to be a national problem,” said Mr. Mattiello.