The myth of the ‘revolution betrayed and hindered’
applied to the reign of Pope Francis: Is it credible?
Translated from
November 16, 2017
In human and political history, there are some recurrent models that are convenient and widely used, especially by the fans of autocracy. One of them is this: "He [the autocrat] wished to change so many things for the better, but ‘they’ would not let him do it!... If it were only up to him… Because yes, he had the best ideas… But ‘they’ simply turned the ideas inside out and thus ruined them”.
Of course, the ‘they’ is always, as a rule, undefined. We never get to learn the identity or the faces of those who opposed these proposals for reform, cleanliness, clarity, transparency, honesty, etc of the Great Autocrat. Which is, of course, unnatural, given that, in general, a great quantity of things are known in detail about such ‘failed revolutions’.
Usually the Great Autocrat has at his disposal ranks of professional and dilettante writers ready to divulge even the slightest detail of his ‘deep thoughts’. Just imagine: if the Great Machinery of Goodness and Mercy but knew who are responsible for putting spokes into its wheels or stones in its cogs, the latter would quickly be splattered to the four winds.
I was thinking of this in looking at the cover of the latest literary opus by Gianluigi Nuzzi
[author of two Vatileaks books so far, as well as his first Vatican ‘expose’ in 2009, about IOR - i.e.,
someone who has made a profitable career out of professional muckraking about the Vatican], entitled
Peccato Originale (Original Sin) with the subtitle
“Conti segreti, verite nascoste, ricatti - Il blocco di potere che ostacola la rivoluzione di Francesco” [Secret accounts,hidden truths, blackmail - The power block that is impeding Francis’s revolution).
Which makes us feel that the Vatican is teeming with moles who keep digging and digging for dirt while the poor pontiff – in his wing of the Casa Santa Marta – feels besieged by the noise of teeth gnawing at the pillars of his new church.
But I reflected and asked myself: Who could they be, these moles seeking to undermine the church of Bergoglio? I did a rapid mental review of the men who have power in the Curia and elsewhere in the Vatican. If you have the patience, stay with me, so later, we can draw our conclusions together.
The pope’s principal collaborator is the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, named by the pope himself. And beside him, the deputy (Sostituto) Secretary of State, Mons. Angelo Becciu. He was named by Benedict XVI, but we can now say without fear of being belied, that he has become the pope’s ‘man of confidence’. There is a reason Becciu has become the pontifical delegate to the Order of Malta, the commissar of a Vatican operation in which the ‘odor’ of money and power far outdoes any spirituality, and will perhaps forever be a big blot in the record of this pontificate.
[This episode alone exposed the utter hypocrisy of the Bergoglio Vatican and the totalitarian caudillismo of Bergoglio.]
Let us go on. At the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, there was Cardinal Mueller, loyal to the pope, but who could not keep himself from occasionally voicing reservations about the pope’s decisions. When his five-year term of office ended, the pope dismissed him without giving him another responsibility, and replaced him with a fellow Jesuit, Mons. Luis Ladaria Ferrer.
[About whom we have not heard a peep since he became CDF head.]
Another Congregation that is central to the governance of the universal Church is that of the Clergy. And one of the first official acts of this pope was to dismiss without cause the ‘Ratzingerian’ Cardinal Mauro Piacenza as Prefect, replacing him with someone of his trust, Mons. (later Cardinal) Beniamino Stella, whose previous career was with the Vatican diplomatic corps, and is now said to be the leading ‘grey eminence’ in the Bergoglian court.
The second important Congregation in this regard is that of Bishops which is still led by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, named by Benedict XVI. Of course, Ouellet lost no time in declaring loyalty to the new pope
[which is fine, except that in doing so, he has also been denigrating Benedict XVI]. Nonetheless, he has been virtually disauthorized in his own Congregation by his #2 man, who is a very close friend of the pope’s private secretary, and who was elevated to office with a stunning and absolutely extraordinary rapidity. And BTW, the pope’s private secretary has not given up his middle-management job at Bishops, where nothing happens unless the pope wishes it.
Proceeding with our so far unfruitful review of the possible conspirators impeding this pope’s ‘revolution’, let us turn to money and finances. The first Secretary of the Economy, Cardinal George Pell, named by this pope, is virtually ‘retired’, having been in Australia for a few months now to seek to answer multiple charges of sex abuse allegedly committed by him decades ago.
Besides him, there is Cardinal Bertello, head of the Governatorate of Vatican State; Cardinal Calcagno, who heads the resource-rich Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See (APSA); and Cardinal Versaldi, whom this pope promoted to be head of the Congregation for Catholic Education. Versaldi had always been thought of as among the followers of Cardinal Bertone, and probably gained favor because of Bertone’s support for Bergoglio in the 2013 Conclave.
Calcagno is often seen sharing a meal (breakfast, lunch or dinner) with the Pope at Casa Santa Marta; Versaldi, as we noted, was promoted; and Bertello seems happy with just running Vatican State administratively.
We know that the pope named another most faithful and ‘pleasing’ follower, Mons. Ricca, whom he rehabilitated from his inglorious past as an openly practicing homosexual in the Vatican diplomatic corps, to make him ‘spiritual director’ of IOR, the Vatican ‘bank’.
And the pope named an American ultra-liberal bishop, Kevin Farrell, now cardinal, to head the new Superdicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, and Mons. Vincenzo Paglia, as a powerful official of the dicastery, whom he also named to head and completely overhaul the Pontifical Academy for Life (dismissing all the members originally named by John Paul II and naming new members who are notorious for their pro-active anti-life positions).
It doesn’t seem like any of those we have named so far could possibly be part of the supposedly Fifth Column working against the pope’s ‘revolution’.
What about the Congregation for Religious Life, that has turned into Bergoglio’s hammer? Both its prefect, Cardinal Braz de Aviz, but most of all, its secretary, the Franciscan Mons. Carballo (who turned out to have led the order to financial disaster before he was called to the Vatican by this pope), are the arm and hand wielding the hammer for the pope.
Have we forgotten any? At the Roman Rota, there is Mons. Pinto, whose loyalty to the pope cannot be exaggerated. At the Apostolic Signatura (the highest Church court), that most competent of canonists, Cardinal Raymond Burke, was quickly replaced as we know by Mons. Dominique Mamberti, whose entire career was in Vatican diplomacy.
At the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood, there is Cardinal Amato, who is now 83 but continues in office even if, when Bergoglio re-confirmed all of the Curial heads in place at the time of Benedict XVI’s retirement, he was the only one whose confirmation was qualified by ‘
donec aliter proveatur’ (unless otherwise decided).
Likewise, Cardinal Sandri, an Argentine, remains prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches, though he has served more than 10 years in this office.
At the Superdicastery for Integral Human Development, we have Cardinal Turkson who could not be a more sycophantic follower of the pope, and at the Congregation for Divine Worship, Cardinal Robert Sarah, known to be persona non grata to this pope for his attachment to traditional liturgy.
[NB: A report earlier this week by Andrea Gagliarducci would have it that Bergoglio will remove Sarah from CDW but make him Prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, where he was #2 man until Benedict XVI named him to head the Pontifical Council Cor Unum. It appears Cardinal Filone, now heading Propaganda Fide, may be named Secretary for the Economy replacing Pell who is on indefinite leave. If this i true, then it is a lucky turn of the cards for Bergoglio, who cannot then be blamed for simply axing the highest-ranking African cardinal in the Curia.]
Then there’s Cardinal Baldisseri, who heads the Secretariat of the Bishops’ Synod, and his #2 man, Mons. Fabene – both of them tru-eblue Bergoglio loyalists. And Mons. Dario Vigano who heads the new Secretariat for Communications, who has emerged as one of the pope’s leading advisers.
Finally, there is Bergoglio’s Crown Council – the nine cardinals supposedly advising him on the governance of the Church and the reform of the Curia. Each and everyone of them was personally handpicked by Bergoglio.
In short, the governance of the Church is almost totally in the hands of Bergoglio’s own men. And therefore, if his reforms, whatever they are, are said to be hindered, it could not be because his own people are ‘rowing’ against him.
So the myth of the Great Autocrat of the good ideas and intentions who, however, is hindered by ‘dark forces’, remains as it always was: a myth that has no credibility.
After reading the blurb for Nuzzi's new book [not without shuddering!], I believe Tosatti’s account above arises from the extravagant claim of the book’s subtitle as to what it is, namely, about “the power block that is impeding Francis’s revolution”.
But according to the blurb, the book recounts scandals in the Vatican from the time of Paul VI to the present, although of course, the usual premise is that this supposed power block is never identified, or is simply presumed to be composed of all those who have been involved in or have manipulated every chicanery or crime ever attributed to the Vatican. The blurb is, of course, typical advertising for books that peddle purple prose and yellow journalism.
After Vaticano s.p.a., Sua Santita and Via Crucis, three investigative books that introduced us to the most profound secrets of the Vatican, Gianluigi Nuzzi in this new book, reconstructs through unpublished documents, confidential letters in the archives of IOR, and surprising testimonies, the three red threads – blood, money and sex – that link and explain the dense tangle of scandals in the Vatican from the pontificate of Paul VI to the present. A web of stories with devastating effects which have always raised questions that have remained unanswered and that paralyze every reform intended by Pope Francis.
He reconstructs finally many truths which have been lacking, starting with the mystery of John Paul I’s death and his never-before divulged meeting with Mons. Marcinkus [the American prelate who had been John Paul II’s chief bodyguard and whom he named to head the IOR in the late 1960s when the Banco Ambrosiano, of which the Vatican was the major stockholder, and which was apparently used by the Mafia for money laundering, collapsed - and the Vatican had to pay some $250 million in restitution to bank clients]; the confidential negotiations between the Vatican and the Rome magistrature to close the case on Emanuela Orlandi [teenaged daughter of a Vatican employee whose mysterious disappearance while waiting for a bus in Rome in 1983, is somehow being blamed on the Vatican, or that the Vatican has participated in a cover-up of the 'crime']; the accounts that cardinals, actors and politicians had in the IOR, involving transactions in the millions, gold bars and a cash flow said to come from international drug trafficking; evidence about a ‘gay lobby’ which supposedly weighs heavily in the decisions of the Vatican, wielding ‘violence’ and pressures that are documented here for the first time.]
EEEWWW!
All I can say is that the one account I have read so far from the book is about a letter supposedly written to Pope Francis by a young Pole who attended the Vatican pre-seminary [a boarding school for the middle grades, where the diocese sends children predisposed to a vocation, and during which they serve as altar boys and acolytes in services at St. Peter's Basilica], in which he says he was witness to nightly sex acts performed with his roommate Paolo by a certain Antonio (who was not a school official nor a priest but seemed to be able to do as he pleased). The writer later told Nuzzi that in September 2014 he received a letter from the CDF telling him that his complaint had been forwarded to the Congregation for the Clergy for action because "none of the facts you describe in your letter come under the 'grave crimes' of sexual abuse for which this dicastery has competence", and that he has not received any other communication from the Vatican since.
It may be that the reporter from Il Fatto Quotidiano who picked up this story from Nuzzi's book is rather incompetent because other than the CDF letter, he does not give any dates, but worse, he does not further identify Antonio, who, it seems, was not a priest (so he wouldn't fall under the competence of the CDF), but nonetheless, was there no investigation ordered at all of the pre-seminary and the Polish student's claims?
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/11/2017 01:43]