I am posting the following without comments for now:
How Bergoglio is rewriting his life:
The years of the 'great desolation'
February 21, 2018
In the closed-door meeting that he held at the beginning of Lent, on February 15, with the priests of the Rome diocese of which he is bishop, Francis sketched out in an unexpected way the trajectory of his life, describing it as a series of “passages,” some of them bright, others dark.
Let’s review word by word this autobiography of his, very instructive on the personality of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, in the official transcription that has been released and that respects the disorder of his speech in Italian.
The first phase is one of rapid and dazzling ascent toward what further on he would call “omnipotence”:
“Right after I was ordained, I was appointed superior the next year, novice master, then provincial, rector of the faculty… A stage of responsibility that began with a certain humility, because the Lord has been good, but then, with time, you feel more sure of yourself: ‘I got this, I got this…’ is the word that comes most. One knows how to get around, how to do things, how to manage….”
In effect, the young Jesuit Bergoglio celebrated his first Mass in 1969, in 1970 became novice master, and in 1973, at the age of just 37, was appointed superior of the Argentine province of the Society of Jesus. He held this position until 1979, when his successor was a Jesuit close to him, Andrés Swinnen, and then until 1985 was rector of the Colegio Máximo di San Miguel.
It must be noted, however, that already in this phase of success there emerged within him an inner disquietude, which he tried to resolve in 1978 by going “for six months, once a week” to a Jewish psychoanalyst, “who helped me greatly, when I was 42 years old,” as he himself revealed last summer in the book-length interview with the French sociologist Dominique Wolton.
But here is the second “passage” of his autobiography, no longer of ascent but of precipitous decline, which pope recounted to the priests of Rome:
“And all of this ended, so many years of leadership… And there began a process of ‘but now I don’t know what to do.’ Yes, be a confessor, finish the doctoral thesis - which was there, and which I never defended. And then starting over and rethinking things. The time of a great desolation, for me. I experienced this time with great desolation, a dark time. I believed that it was already the end of life, yes, I served as a confessor, but with a spirit of defeat.
Why? Because I believed that the fullness of my vocation - but without saying so, now that I think of it - was in doing things, these things. But no, there is something else! I did not quit prayer, this helped me a lot. I prayed a lot, in this period, but I was ‘as dry as a log.’ I was helped so much by prayer there, in front of the tabernacle… But the last periods of this time - of years, I don’t remember if it was from 1980… from 1983 to ’92, almost ten years, nine full years - in the last period prayer was very much in peace, it was with great peace, and I said to myself: ‘What will happen now?” because I felt different, with great peace. I was a confessor and spiritual director, in that period: it was my work. But I experienced it in a very dark way, very dark and suffering, and also with the infidelity of not finding the path, and compensation, compensating for [the loss] of this world made of ‘omnipotence,’ seeking worldly compensations.”
Desolation, dark time, dryness, spirit of defeat… In effect, beginning from 1986, when his bitter enemy Víctor Zorzín became the new provincial of the Argentine Jesuits, Bergoglio was rapidly pushed aside, sent against his will to study in Germany and finally forced into a sort of exile in the city of Córdoba, between 1990 and 1992, without any role anymore.
He sustained himself with prayer. But even as he recounts it today, Bergoglio experienced those years with great suffering, in never-resolved tension between the sense of defeat and the will to make a comeback.
And among those who held the power at the time in the Society of Jesus, both in Argentina and at its general curia in Rome, all the way up to superior general Peter Hans Kolvenbach, this lack of psychological balance of his and therefore his unreliability had become the shared judgment.
It was perhaps in order to offer a belated remedy for this quarrel that Pope Francis, last January 20 in Perù, speaking off the cuff to the priests and religious, wanted to recall that “I cared a lot” about Kolvenbach, “a Dutch Jesuit who died last year,” in part because “it was said that he had such a sense of humor that he was able to laugh at everything that happened, at himself and even at his own shadow.”
But getting back to the account of his own life that Francis presented to the priests of Rome, here is the third and last series of “passages,” all of them once again on the rise, starting with that “telephone call from the nuncio” that - he says - “put me on another path,” that of the episcopate.
It was the spring of 1992, and the Vatican nuncio in Argentina at the time, Ubaldo Calabresi, telephoned him to tell him that he would be consecrated bishop at the behest of the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, who wanted him as his auxiliary.
What came afterward was an unstoppable rise: to coadjutor bishop with right of succession, to archbishop of Buenos Aires, to cardinal…
“And then the last passage, from 2013. I didn’t realize what had happened there: I continued to act like a bishop, saying: ‘You take care of it, since You put me here.’”
The miraculous turning point that in 1992 plucked him out of the exile in which his confreres of the Society of Jesus had confined him was “prepared [for him] by the Lord - he was careful to emphasize - precisely in that “dark, not easy” period.
But in any case that period did not resolve - to the contrary - his psychological qualms, as proven by two of the public “confessions” he has made as pope, one at the beginning of the pontificate and another a few weeks ago.
He told the first to students of Jesuit schools on June 7, 2013, in regard to his decision to live at Santa Marta instead of at the Apostolic Palace:
"For me it is a question of personality: that is what it is. I need to live with people, and were I to live alone, perhaps a little isolated, it wouldn’t be good for me. I was asked this question by a teacher: 'But why don’t you go and live there?'. I replied: 'Please listen, professor, it is for psychological reasons'. It is my personality. I cannot live alone, do you understand?" [A big fat lie, of course, because all of his biographers make it a point to highlight his choice of living by himself in a two-room apartment in Buenos Aires instead of at the Bishops's Palace or in a Jesuit community which he could have done! In fact, one gets the impression that the dour, funeral-faced Archbishop of Buenos Aires lived with little joy in his life until he was elected pope, when he discovered the joy of immense popularity and being the object of total unqualified praise, as well as revelling in the immense authority that comes with being pope, sovereign of the church as well as of Vatican City State.]
He told the second last January 16 to his fellow Jesuits from Chile in the closed-door conversation that was afterward transcribed and published with his permission in
La Civiltà Cattolica on February 17, and it concerns the reason why he does not want to read the writings of his opponents.
The reason - he said - is that of safeguarding his 'mental health', or his 'mental hygiene',” terms that he hammered away at three times in just one minute of conversation, and that presuppose an apodictic judgment of “insanity” on those who criticize him, without room for a rational engagement:
"For my own good [mental health] I do not read the content of internet sites of this so-called 'resistance.' I know who they are, I know the groups, but I do not read them for my own mental health. If there is something very serious, they tell me about it so that I know. You know them… It is displeasing, but you have to go on. Historians tell us that it takes a century for a Council to put down its roots. We are halfway there.
"Sometimes we ask: but that man, that woman, have they read the Council? And there are people who have not read the Council. And if they have read it, they have not understood it. Fifty years on! We studied philosophy before the Council, but we had the advantage of studying theology after it. We lived through the change of perspective, and the Council documents were already there.
"When I perceive resistance, I seek dialogue whenever it is possible; but some resistance comes from people who believe they possess the true doctrine and accuse you of being a heretic. When I cannot see spiritual goodness in what these people say or write, I simply pray for them. I find it sad, but I won’t settle on this sentiment for the sake of my own mental well-being [mental hygiene].”
Reactions to this last interview and what he thinks of those who write against him ought to be the subject of a subsequent post here. Meanwhile, there's a new development on the Bergoglio scandal-a-day front:
Leaked documents raise question of pope’s
personal role in new Vatican financial scandal
by John-Henry Westen
Editor
ROME, February 20, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Leaked documents obtained by LifeSiteNews connect the Pope himself to a new Vatican financial scandal and raise serious questions about his global reputation as the “pope for the poor.”
LifeSiteNews has obtained internal documents of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation, a charity with a stellar history of assisting the world’s poor, showing that
last summer the Pope personally requested, and obtained in part, a $25 million grant to a corruption-plagued, Church-owned dermatological hospital in Rome accused of money laundering. Records from the financial police indicate the hospital has liabilities over one billion USD – an amount larger than the national debt of some 20 nations.
The grant has lay members of the Papal Foundation up in arms, and some tendering resignations. Responding to questions from LifeSiteNews, the Papal Foundation staff sent a statement saying that it is not their practice to comment on individual requests.
Speaking of grants in general, the Papal Foundation said their mission has not changed. “The grants to help those in need around the world and of significance to the Holy Father are reviewed and approved through well-accepted philanthropic processes by the Board and its committees,” it said.
Lay membership or becoming a “steward” in the Papal Foundation involves the pledge “to give $1 million over the course of no more than ten years with a minimum donation of $100,000 per year.” Those monies are invested in order to make a perpetual fund to assist the Church.
However, the majority of the board is composed of U.S. bishops, including every U.S. Cardinal living in America. The foundation customarily gives grants of $200,000 or less to organizations in the developing world via the Holy See.
According to the internal documents, the Pope made the request for the massive grant, which is 100 times larger than its normal grants, through Papal Foundation board chairman Cardinal Donald Wuerl in the summer of 2017.
Despite opposition from the lay “stewards,” the bishops on the board voted in December to send an $8 million payment to the Holy See. In January, the documents reveal, lay members raised alarm about what they consider a gross misuse of their funds, but despite their protests another $5 million was sent with Cardinal Wuerl brooking no dissent.
Along with this report, LifeSite is publishing three leaked documents.
On January 6, the steward who until then served as chairman of the Foundation’s audit committee, submitted his resignation along with a report of the committee’s grave objections to the grant. In his resignation letter accompanying the report, he wrote:
“As head of the Audit Committee and a Trustee of the Foundation, I found this grant to be negligent in character, flawed in its diligence, and contrary to the spirit of the Foundation. Instead of helping the poor in a third-world country, the Board approved an unprecedented huge grant to a hospital that has a history of mismanagement, criminal indictments, and bankruptcy.
“Had we allowed such recklessness in our personal careers we would never have met the requirements to join The Papal Foundation in the first place.”
The audit committee chairman’s report noted that the Foundation’s “initial $8 million was sent without any supporting documentation.”
He said the board eventually received a “2-1/2 inch thick binder of information (mostly in Italian)” but it lacked essential details. The report notes:
There was no Balance Sheet. There was no clear explanation as to how the $25 million would be used. Normal grant requests are fairly specific about how our money will be used. Buried in the thick binder was only a one-page financial projection labelled “Draft for Discussion” showing:
2017 1.6 million Euro PROFIT
2018 2.4 million Euro PROFIT
2019 4.4 million Euro PROFIT
And on this data, our Board of Directors voted to grant this failing hospital $25 million of our hard-earned dollars. To put this in perspective, rarely have we given above $200,000 to a grant request. I pointed out that there was NO PROFESSIONAL DUE DILIGENCE, just a lot of fluff. If the numbers presented were accurate, then this commercial enterprise should go to a bank. They don’t need our money. If the numbers were not accurate, then a decision could not be made.
The lay members of the board have good reason to be concerned about the supposed recipient of their generosity. Pope Francis asked for the funds to be directed to the Istituto Dermopatico dell'Immacolata (IDI), a dermatological hospital in Rome that has been plagued with corruption and financial scandal for years.
On May 15, 2013, ANSA, the leading news wire in Italy, reported “police confiscated over six million euros worth of property and bank accounts as part of investigations into alleged corruption at the Italian hospital group Istituto Dermopatico dell'Immacolata (IDI).”
The news of Vatican financial corruption connected to the IDI hit international headlines in 2015 with a June 20 Reuters article showing the Italian magistrates suspected Vatican Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi diverted 30 million euros destined for a Church-owned children’s hospital to the Church-owned IDI.
Another ANSA piece from 2016 reported, “Finance police discovered IDI was 845 million euros in the red and 450 million euros in tax evasion while 82 million euros had been diverted and six million euros in public funds embezzled.”
In May 2017,
La Repubblica – the only newspaper Pope Francis says he reads – reported on court rulings revolving around the IDI detailing twenty-four indictments, leading to a dozen convictions, some of which carried over three years in prison. The court recognized the evidence from the financial police including “about 845 million euros in balance sheet liabilities and over 82 million in diverted funds, plus the undue use of another 6 million public funds.”
On January 19, after numerous calls and emails among lay members supporting the audit committee’s position, the Foundation’s executive committee sent a letter trying to placate the donating members.
That document, sent by Foundation President Bishop Michael Bransfield, and signed by Cardinal Wuerl, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, as well as several Stewards on the executive, highlights that the request for the donation came directly from Pope Francis. They wrote:
Many of us believe that, had it been us, we would have told the Holy Father that the Papal Foundation would not be able to help on this project – but we weren’t in the room with him. We can surmise what we would have done, had it been one of us, but we really don’t know. In fact, we have been explicit throughout our history that this is the Papal Foundation. We have worked in conjunction with the pope from the very beginning. We don’t approve every request he makes, but he is the Pope, and we listen to him, and we listen intently.
The executive’s letter regrets “the significant degree of discontent” but admonishes: “If we do not have love in our hearts toward one another, we are like clanging gongs or clashing cymbals.”
“We do not believe it is in the best interest of Christ or his Church to presume bad faith or ill will…,” it adds, but allows it is “legitimate to have disagreements over prudential decisions.”
“The Papal Foundation has bylaws that put the ultimate control of the organization in the hands of the US-domiciled Cardinals,” says the letter.
The executive concedes that
when a grant is “over one hundred times the size of many of our other grants, there should be near unanimity in the vote, and that is not what happened.”
The letter also notes that while half of the $25 million was already transferred to the Vatican – for the IDI – Cardinal Wuerl “has written to the Secretary of State to request, given the circumstances surrounding this grant, that the Holy See decline to accept any further monies pursuant to the grant that was approved in December.”
Moreover the executive proposes a “new grant policy wherein any grant of more than $1 million must be approved by a majority of both lay and clerical Trustees on the Board.”
A first attempt to quell the stewards was sent on January 8 suggesting that the massive request of funds for the corrupt hospital was actually a part of Pope Francis’s effort to fight financial corruption. Accompanied by a letter and reflection from Cardinal Wuerl, a “PF Stewards Report” explained that
the $25 million request of the Pope for the IDI was made, “in the larger context of the Holy Father’s commitment to confront and eliminate corruption and financial mismanagement both within the Vatican itself and in outside projects with which it was involved or sponsored.” [By helping an institution known to be very corrupt and mismanaged???]
A highly trusted source inside the Vatican informed LifeSiteNews that much financial corruption continues unabated under Pope Francis even though the Pope is kept informed.
[Remember Archbishop Farrell and John Allen swear Bergoglio knows everything that is said and done at the Vatican! Boy, is that ever a boomerang statement!]
The Papal Foundation has a stellar record of assisting the Popes to support the poor, largely in developing nations. Since their first gift to Pope St. John Paul II in 1990, the Foundation’s fund has grown to over $215 million, and has given a total of $121 million in grants and scholarships.
From a look at their recent grants it is evident that the use of funds heretofore has been above reproach. The wealthy American Catholic families funded the building of churches, monasteries, schools and seminaries in impoverished nations. AIDS hospices, facilities for care of youth with physical and mental disabilities, and the like have also benefited from their generosity.
It seems this scandal is the first in the 30-year history of the organization. The executive letter states: “It is true that over the last fifteen years, if not longer, most of our donations have gone to the poor, and most of those poor have been in the poorer countries of the world.” It acknowledges that throughout the organization’s history, “almost all of the decisions of the organization were made with near unanimity of the Board.”
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/03/2018 03:21]