They're still very much around - the vipers in the Vatican and their willing agents in the media. How many private letters to Benedict XVI have been leaked out that a muck-raking journalist - who seems to have found his niche dredging the sewers of the Vatican - can write a whole book about them? Is it a real 'book', anyway, or a puffed-up propaganda pamphlet? In any case, reports in the Italian media today are focused on only one letter (it may have been more than one) - written to the Pope by former Avvenire editor Dino Boffo at the time he was being slandered by a major Italian newspaper in 2009, which made it appear that he was fined by a provincial Italian court for some telephone tapping claimed by the newspaper editor to have been part of a homosexual affair that Boffo was involved in. A few months later, the editor publicly retracted his story and apologized for it , saying he had been misled because the source of the documentation he used was 'someone reliable'.
The crucifixion of Papa Ratzinger
A new book entitled 'Sua Santita'
divulges private letters to the Pope
by Francesco Grana
Translated from
May 17, 2012
Benedict the prophet. Seven years ago, when the took over the Barque of Peter from the hands of the great Pope John Paul II, the new Pope said clearly: "Pray for me that I may not flee the wolves for fear". He knew what awaited him.
From the Regensburg lecture to lifting the excommunication of the four Lefebvrian bishops, to the pedophile priest scandals, and to the moles which seem intent on burying his Pontificate.
"Sometimes one has the impression", he wrote to the bishops of the world in March 2009, "that our society needs at least one group towards which no tolerance can be shown, against whom one can peacefully lash out with hatred. And if anyone should dare get close to this object of hate - in this case, the Pope - he too loses the right to tolerance and he too may well be treated with hate without fear or reservation".
He too also noted at the time that in the Church today - as in some of the early communities in the time of St. Paul - there are those who bite and devour each other in what they consider to be an expression of freedom that is wrongly interpreted.
So the latest scourge he has to bear is to witness the public divulgation of private letters sent to him.
Nuzzi's book, and the Libero front page with its headline bank:
Venom in the Vatican
The secret letters of Benedict XVI'
A book by Nuzzi lifts the veil on a series of sleazy episodes. There's the letter to the Pope from Dino Boffo who accuses the editor of OR for the scandal that engulfed him.
Numerous private letters to Benedict XVI are to be made public in a book to come out in Italy soon by Gianluigi Nuzzi, a journalist of the private Italian TV channel La7 [who had hosted the TV programs that first divulged the Vigano letters last January and other minor correspondence leaked from the Secretariat of State. Nuzzi gained minor celebrity with his book
Vatican s.p.a. [s.p.a. is the Italian equivalent of 'Inc.' after an English corporation's name] in 2009 in which he researched the workings of the Vatican institution IOR and the major financial scandals and questions that have plagued it in the past four decades.] The letters cast both light and shadows on the Vatican and on the Pope.
The newspaper
Libero announced the book publication today with a front-page editorial by its editor Maurizio Belpietro [an article which contained quite a few glaring mistakes in reference to the letter it chose to focus upon.
Friday morning,
Corriere della Sera plans to come out with a special edition of its weekly magazine Sette, dedicated to Nuzzi's book and its contents.
It is a war against the Vatican carried to the extreme by Nuzzi who wrote Vatican s.p.a., which was a big best-seller at a time of economic crisis.
[Gossip always sells! I'm sure Nuzzi researched his first best-seller well enough, but it's also the nature for expose books to include a lot of gossip for 'enhancement'.]
The case study held up as an exemplar in this new expose concerns the Dino Boffo case from three years ago (summer of 2009). Those who follow Vatican news know the basic elements: the editor of L'Osservatore Romano, Giovanni Maria Vian, with the support of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone [to whom the OR editor reports], vs Dino Boffo, at the time, the triple-threat supremo of the Italian bishops' widespread multimedia enterprise; Boffo who then writes the Pope complaining about Vian, whom he claims appears to have been responsible for the slanderous lies written by Il Giornale editor Vittorio Feltri against Boffo; Feltri dragged [willingly, it seems] into a war that one can hardly call holy.
Then there's the matter of papal succession, in which Angelo Scola is considered the top cardinal in the running (with Cardinals Marco Ouellet and Mauro Piacenza in seocnd place).
[But why would anyone write to the Pope about such speculation? It's indelicate and unseemly, to say the least, and most inconsiderate!]
And what about the Church in all this?
The first question has got to be: How can private letters to the Pope be leaked to anyone? Is there any confidential file that can still stay confidential in the Vatican? When this happened with Mons. Vigano's letter to the Pope, one surmised that Vigano himself or someone acting in his behalf could have leaked it. But this time? One cannot imagine anyone in the Pope's immediate circle doing it - Monsignors Gaenswein and Xuereb? Birgit Wansing? The Memores Domini? Paolo the valet? Ingrid Stampa whenever she comes around? Who else would have access to the Pope's files? Or is there perhaps some supposedly trusted assistant sent up by the Secretriat of State from time to time to assist, who takes advantage of the opportunity to make copies of documents that he is given access to? Do the disclosed letters also include any replies the Pope may have sent?
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/05/2012 15:32]