How In The Name Of Jesus Did Raffaello Follieri Get People To Believe Him?
It occurred to me at a party last night that you could be heading into some serious social occasions this weekend without a full grasp of how fucking awesome Anne Hathaway's ex-boyfriend is, and I can't let that happen because it is the feelgood story of the summer because it's literally impossible not to come away with it imbued in the sense of your own of intellectual superiority. I'll explain! Raffaello Follieri is an Italian ex-convict's son who came to the United States a few years back and met, through a lawyer friend, a sleazy billionaire supermarket magnate named Ron Burkle. The year was 2005. The Orange County Archdiocese had just agreed to pay a record $100 million pedophile settlement and all across the country Catholic churches were trying to sell off their rectories and lyceums and school properties and whatnot. So Raffaello comes in and tells Burkle he has first dibs on all of it. Why? Because he's the CFO of the Vatican. At 26 years old. Does the Vatican even have a CFO? Who knows, right, maybe that sort of thing would be public information if it weren't the Vatican we were talking about. More »










