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Antonio Socci writes in praise of Cardinal Pietro Parolin as a seeming voice of common sense in the Bergoglio Vatican. In an earlier post, I had blamed Parolin along with the pope for the Vatican's fiasco on Venezuela, having assumed that Bergoglio sought and followed his advice on everything Venezuela, since his last posting before becoming Secretary of State was as Nuncio to Venezuela in the final years of Hugo Chavez's socialist dictatorship and the start of Maduro's continuation of that dictatorship. If I was totally or even partially wrong about Parolin's role in shaping Bergoglio's policy towards Maduro, then I apologize most sincerely to the cardinal and to those who follow this Forum.
New political disasters for Comrade Bergoglio
as the Vatican goes into self-defense mode
Cardinal Parolin rides to the rescue of the pope from his own recklessness?
Translated from
August 6, 2017
For Bergoglio, it was a great defeat that he suffered over Venezuela. He lost his bet on Maduro and he had to give in to Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and the bishops of Venezuela who demanded a denunciation of the Red Despot. Which resulted in the following communique from the Vatican on August 4:
The Argentine pope was in fact quite 'close' to Maduro (because Bergoglio is always 'tender and loving' with all Red tyrants, from
the Castro brothers in Cuba to the Chinese, while he demonizes Donald Trump and other democratic leaders not to his liking).
In October last year, Bergoglio even took part in a propaganda photo showing him marking a blessing on Maduro's forehead.
[At that time, Reuters was reporting that
Venezuela's increasingly militant opposition stepped up its push to oust leftist leader Nicolas Maduro on Wednesday with protests that drew hundreds of thousands but also saw unrest leading to dozens of injuries and arrests… Enraged by last week's suspension of their push for a referendum to remove Maduro and determined to end 17 years of socialism in the South American OPEC nation, Venezuela's opposition has sharply ramped up its tactics in recent days. After launching a political trial against Maduro in the National Assembly, the opposition coalition held nationwide marches dubbed "Takeover of Venezuela" with crowds chanting "This government is going to fall!"…
Yet Bergoglio had the chutzpah to publicly bless the despot when he visited him at the Vatican! What was that all about?]
Now that the despot has reduced Venezuela to mass hunger (although the country is one of the world's richest in natural resources, leading the world in exploitable petroleum reserves) and he has taken to employing bloody violence to suppress public protests against him, the people and the Church in Venezuela can no longer take the Argentine pope's tacit support for Maduro. And the Secretary of State has prevailed in finally having the Vatican adopt the Venezuelan bishops' position protesting Maduro's regime.
This is happening too often – in which within the Church, the rule of the Argentine pope is described in terms like 'calamity', 'disaster' and 'scourge'.
And the muffled tones characteristic of ecclesiastical circles do not hide the protective self-defense mechanisms in the Church to reverse blows or to limit and/or patch up the incalculable damages provoked by Bergoglio and his court.
Ever more often, it is Cardinal Parolin who has stepped in with actions to contain and/or correct such damages, as he has done on the Venezuela fiasco. Let's just look at the past few weeks.
On July 13, Parolin released a statement about the migrant waves assailing Europe today, a statement that was considered a Vatican correction, if not disavowal, of Mons. Nunzio Galantino[secretary-general of the Italian bishops' conference appointed by Bergoglio originally to be his eyes and ears when the CEI president was Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, since replaced by a man of Bergoglio's choice], and therefore, implicitly a correction of the pope himself who has made of unconditional mass migration a dogma of faith for Bergoglianism, and whose obsessive hammering insistence, after his much-publicized trip to Lampedusa in July 2013, that all nations must welcome all migrants, the Italian government then under the Partita Democrata to virtually do away with the country's defenses against unconditional acceptance of migrants, to the point that Italy has been reeling under an unstoppable flow of undocumented aliens in such numbers as to be described as an invasion.
But above all, Parolin had to come up with a colossal diplomatic 'cork' to cover up a recent international gaffe by Bergoglio, little noted by the media, that startled the world of international diplomacy. On July 8, in the pope's latest surreal interview with Eugenio Scalfari, published in La Repubblica, among his many usual whoppers, Bergoglio made a disconcerting statement about Trump and Putin.
As Scalfari reported it: "Pope Francis told me he was very concerned about the G20 summit [held in Hamburg, Germany July 7-8], saying 'I fear there are quite dangerous alliances among powers who have a distorted view of the world, like America and Russia, or Putin and Assad over the Syrian war'."
Indeed, at that G20 summit, Trump and Putin met for the first time and had a conversation that could be seen as the start of a dialog between the two leaders, with the potential of facilitating peace efforts in Syria. There is no one with common sense who could possibly disapprove a peaceful dialog between the two powers (USA and Russia). Especially not in the Catholic Church, where the constant line of the Vatican and the popes before Bergoglio was always to favor dialog as the means to reach an agreement that could safeguard world peace. [But Bergoglio himself has been a loud advocate of 'dialog' as the solution for everything, though in his Hegelian notion of dialog, it would be endless because nothing would ever be resolved!]
On the other hand, some very powerful warmongering circles in the USA have been seeking to foment tensions, if not military confrontation, between the USA and Russia. Circles that are best represented by Barack Obama and especially Hillary Clinton, and who have been seeking to provoke Trump into a collision course with Russia. [For reasons, obviously, that have little to do with warmongering, but everything with setting up a gigantic strawman demonizing Trump as having won the election over Clinton because of collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.]
And these are very powerful circles who are aiming at a military encounter with Russia (perhaps using Ukraine or Syria as a pretext) which would have unforeseeable and incalculable consequences. It is therefore disconcerting that a pope would line up – and say so publicly – with the faction in favor of war and international tension. Which is not surprising because Bergoglio's adherence to the Obama-Clinton faction in American politics has always been obvious. [This analysis is naïve, unfounded and unworthy of someone like Socci to propose. Trump's opponents do not want war with any nation – only with Trump whom they are trying to remove from the presidency by hook or by crook, mostly by crook. And of course, Bergoglio is on the Obama-Clinton side because they represent all the major items on his pet ultra-liberal secular agenda.]
Bergoglip's statement to Scalfari obviously provoked a lot of head-scratching at the Vatican Secretariat of State. And so on July 27, Parolin – who will be visiting Moscow at month's end – rushed to the rescue and issued a statement saying the West and Russia should dialog in order to understand each other. He went even further:
It is not just being within Europe with makes Eastern Europe important, but also its role in the history of civilization and culture, and in the Christian faith. There are those who point out that when St. John Paul II spoke of a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, he was not thinking of Western expansionism but of a more united co-participatory unity among all the nations of the continent".
Regarding the international role of Russia (to which the Democratic politicians of the USA are adversarial): "Everyday it seems that the differences between the countries of the West and Russia are underscored, as if there were two different worlds, each with its own values, interests, national or transnational pride, and even its own idea of international law that must be asserted against the other world. In such a context, the challenge is to contribute a better reciprocal understanding between those presented as two opposing poles.
The effort to understand each other does not mean acquiescence of one to the position of the other, but rather a patient, constructive, and frank dialog that is mutually respectful. This is even more important on the questions that are at the origin of present conflicts and those that could provoke a further increase in tensions. In this sense, the question of peace and the search for solutions to the various crises in progress must be placed over and above any national or partisan interest. Because there can be no winners nor losers in this matter."
But Parolin also said: "The possibility of a catastrophe is not thereby excluded", referring to a war between the powers, but he concluded, "I am convinced that it is part of the mission of the Holy See to insist on this [dialog]".
Which is the very opposite of Bergoglio's rash statement to Scalfari.
Parolin has also intervened, it seems, to prevent another Bergoglian misadventure: the supposed intention to name Enzo Bianchi a cardinal. He is the Prior of the Bose open community whom Bergoglio esteems because he represents the distillation of the most extreme Catho-progressivism.
Parolin apparently had to intervene because Bianchi is not even a priest. He is a layman (and who knows, maybe Bergoglio is planning to make Scalfari a cardinal, too!) [Bianchi is not even Catholic. But while checking this out on Google, I found a January 2016 post on The Eponymous Flower which already reported this rumor about Bianchi, shortly before Bergoglio named him a consultant to one of the dicasteries. Maybe, now that the church of Bergoglio can make martyr-saints of just about anybody, it will not require anyone to be Catholic to qualify for sainthood. Which is, of course, the logical consequence of having a pope who is fundamentally anti-Catholic, to begin with! And it would not be far-fetched to think he might name some infamous 'Sisters on the Bus' cardinals and pack the College further with certified anti-Catholic know-it-alls, one of whom might even aspire to be the first female pope!]
Probably, Parolin also had a hand in the final phase of the Vatican's involvement in the case of Charlei Gard in order to save the reputation of the Holy See that had been heavily compromised by the obstinate silence of Bergoglio on the case [even after his hand-picked surrogate on family, marriage and life matters, Mons. Paglia, categorically sided with the English and European courts which had ruled against any effort to keep the baby alive since his affliction was hopelessly terminal].
Although thanks to the flood of telephone calls to the Vatican demanding the pope's intervention in behalf of the baby and his parents, Bergoglio on July 1 finally sent a timid message of moral support through the Vatican Press Center (after the courts and Britain's National Health Service had already ruled against continuing life support for the baby). But it was Parolin who issued a statement on July 4 saying "we will do what is possible" to help the Gards, and to activate the Vatican's Bambino Gesu pediatric center because "we are in favor of defending life..s and will offer every possibility so that care may continue for this baby".
And of course, the Secretariat of State under Parolin has taken over the reins again for those sectors of the Curia whose supervision Bergoglio had earlier taken away and transferred to the new Secretariat for the Economy, now that Cardinal Pell is hors de combat[in a war for power and turf easily won by State without a fight.]
Finally, it is also being said that the Secretariat of State is seeking to rein in the 'revolutionary' plans on the liturgy by some in the Bergoglian court (manipulation of the liturgy is a minefield which may well provoke a schism).
Meanwhile, Parolin's seeming anti-Bergoglio activism has been increasingly reaping approval among many in the Vatican who are upset by Bergoglio's Church-wrecking efforts. But how long can the situation continue? [i.e., How long will the pope continue to allow him the latitude he appears to have exercised in the past few weeks? Or is Bergoglio not the ironhanded Maximo Caudillo we have been led to believe he is?
On the one hand, it seems naïve to think that a Secretary of State could be so pro-active in countering or neutralizing egregious ill-advised moves or statements by his own pope, unless he had that pope's tacit of explicit approval for his activism (if only out of prudence and an acknowledgement that he, the pope, had made statements and gestures that are counter-productive for his purposes and are therefore best corrected). Because surely we would have heard some expressions of papal disapproval for Parolin by now!
On the other hand, in a papal court where everyone is trying to outdo everyone else in kowtowing to the pope, is Parolin now an exception as the one who can speak truth to power?
- If he is, whence has he suddenly gained that clout, unless from the pope himself?
- Is that at all likely with someone like Bergoglio, who seems to have reverted without hesitation to the rash authoritarianism of which he was accused when he was Provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina back in the 1980s?
- And if Parolin has demonstrated moral courage against Bergoglio on so many issues in just three weeks, does it reflect his progress in positioning himself as the pope-in-waiting as Hilary White suggested in a recent article?
- Could there be enough true believers in Parolin at the Vatican to back him against Bergoglio while Bergoglio is very much in command?
Too bad Socci does not get into these questions which are a logical consequence of what amounts to an apologia pro Parolin.] |