A News Analysis by Br. Alexis Bugnolo
In a post full of propaganda and little real new news, but with a URL to identify who is reading it, the Associated Press via Microsoft Network is attempting desperately to regain control of the Narrative on Pope Francis’ health, that is, attempting to convince the now skeptical world that Pope Francis’ state of health is as the Vatican has been claiming it to be after 34 days.
News articles such as this can be read two ways: either you can simply read it and believe what they say, or you can deconstruct it to see what the agenda of the News Outlet is and what facts they fear are not being accepted. In such an analysis you can also see what they think are the strongest proofs for the narrative they want to push and what arguments they use to sustain it.
For this reason, FromRome.Info will publish here an analysis of this AP article to see what we can learn from it.
Background
For those who have not been following FromRome.Info, these last 34 days, I will first summarize the claims made by Vatican News about Pope Francis. Then point out the inconsistencies in their reporting, and then explain why the general public does not accept the official narrative. — If you have been reading FromRome.Info regularly, you can skip this section. But if you have not, keep reading, as this will be necessary to know what the Associated Press and Microsoft Network are so concerned about
Pope Francis, we are told, went to Gemelli Polyclinc here at Rome on Feb. 14, 2025, in the afternoon, because of breathing issues. A few days later, we were told that his medical staff had determined he had a polymicrobial infection of the lungs. Then a few days later, we were told that tests had shown that Pope Francis had pneumonia in the lower lobs of both lungs. Then on Feb. 23, we were told that the Pope nearly choked to death on the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, Feb. 22. It was also claimed he was suffering mild kidney failure, had been given blood transfusions and was in a critical condition. RAI NEWS that day had a camera doing a live feed from outside the hospital, evidently because they heard the pope would soon die.
A few days later we were told that the kidney failure was under control and that it was probably the cortisone that the doctors administered which caused it. It was about this time, on Feb. 25, that rumors of the Pope’s imminent death began to circulate at Rome. Pope Francis, it was then claimed, was placed on a different antibiotic regime. On Feb. 27, Vatican news miscounted the number of days in hospital. And they did this again on Feb. 28. On March 3, we were told that Pope Francis nearly choked to death twice, and had to be aspirated. The day after we were told that he had undergone a double broncioscopy to clear the mucus out of his lungs.
Then sources at Rome started to admit that Pope Francis had been taking cortisone before he went into hospital. From this point on the narrative pushed by Vatican News began to unravel.
When Cardinal Grech on March 15 claimed the Pope had instructed him to write all the Archbishops and Bishops of the world to spend the next 3 years thinking how to radically change the Church, demands for proof that the Pope was alive flooded in from every part of the world. The next day the Vatican released what they called a photograph of Pope Francis sitting in front of the chapel in the hospital, across the hall from his room on the 10th floor.
Soon social media was exploding with criticism, since the photograph did not correspond to the Press Releases in several major ways. This caused the general public to lose all confidence in what the Vatican was claiming and had claimed.
Then, the final nail in the coffin of the accepted narrative came: with Mr. Grana, a close confidant of Pope Francis admitting on camera to Rome Reports, that Pope Francis had been abusing cortisone for months and nearly died as a consequent several times in February of 2025 BEFORE he was admitted to Gemelli Polyclinic.
It is in this context, that Cardinals in power at the Vatican began to denounce disbelief in the narrative they pushed, by calling criticism “toxic conspiracy theories”. And that is the situation we are in at the present.
Numerous Inconsistencies
When Press Releases get basic facts wrong, you know immediately that the staff writing them are making things up and are not receiving information from the source.
To say that the Pope had been in hospital 13 days when it was 12, or 15 days when it was 14, was a really obvious give away.
To claim that no prognosis would be published and then that a prognosis was made but refuse after a week to say what it was, was also a clear give away that no one with any sense of medical ethics was a source of these claims.
But the real zinger was the alleged photograph, which hid Pope Francis’ face, showed no breathing tubes, as previously claimed, and sported an appendage, more like the foot of a pig, than a human hand, replete with a kind of liturgical garment never seen in the history of western civilization.
Romans might be very unwilling to talk in public, but that does not mean they are stupid. They know fake, when they see fake.
And yet, in response to this widespread disbelief, the Vatican, which could have dispelled it in 1 minute with a short video message from Pope Francis chose not to. Evidently because they cannot.
This is why it is no exaggeration to say that the majority of the Catholic world who has been paying attention, no longer believes any claims about Pope Francis’ condition. The suspicion that he is dead, has become a presumption and now a belief. The ball is in the Vatican’s court to prove otherwise.
The Article by Associated Press
In their article above (click the image to read it), they take pains immediately to emphasize that Pope Francis “is wielding power”. They say this because the public no longer believes that he is alive or in a state of health capable of governing.
Then the AP claims that Pope Francis is “rewriting the narrative of how popes exercise power”. They say this because they know that the general public now recognizes that it is a narrative not a reality; his close confidants at the Vatican are running everything in his name.
Then the AP tries to convince you that since Pope Francis is an informal guy, who is a jet-setter and makes decisions casually, what Vatican News is doing is totally at the request of Pope Francis, who wants the world to know the concrete details of his sickness. They say this because they are trying to make the public unbelieve what they see and hear with their own eyes and ears, in all the inconsistencies of Vatican Press Releases, which are so made up, that they sometime get the number of days in hospital wrong, and offer descriptions which do not correspond to photographs, or photos which do not correspond with press releases.
Again, the AP writer Nicole Winfield insists that Pope Francis is in control, when common sense of the masses know that under such medical conditions as claimed, he could scarcely be so. Winfield cites episcopal appointments as proof Pope Francis is alive, working and making decisions. Yes, just like the bishops appointed by Pope John Paul II the day after he was first claimed to be dead, March 31, 2005, and then miraculously came back to life to appoint 5 or so bishops!
The AP article then says that Pope Francis is not shy, that is why a photograph was released. But they emphasize that L’Avvenire is the one to say it’s a “real” photograph. And thus give away the charade with a single word.
CONCLUSION
Desperation oozes out of every line of Winfield’s attempt to tell you what is real, in her own jocular kind of style. But her comical article, in both senses of the word, has not convinced in anything other than that she might have been asked to write this propaganda piece at the request of Cardinal Parolin and Pope Francis’ other magic circle Cardinals, who have now lost a lot of confidence from the general public, for the obvious attempt to hide the truth: namely that Pope Francis is a drug abuser, his staff at the Vatican trafficked cortisone to him in dangerous amounts, on account of which he nearly died several times before arriving at the Hospital, and that the reason we do not yet know the names of his medical team are chiefly because they know that the Vatican Press Releases are a tour de force in lying, to cover this up.
The article also convinces that those who want to stay in power, by claiming Pope Francis is “alive” and “will recover”, are just the kind of men who might try to claim he is still alive for as long as they need him to be alive. And this is just the kind of thing the AP is known for doing, keeping the worst kinds of men in power in the West, to take down Christian civilizations. Thus, I conclude that Winfield’s article is truly done out of a religious devotion. The only problem is that she is a fideist, and thinks all truth about Pope Francis’ health is based on the ideological need to keep him alive.
Until authentic proof of life is given, nothing more need to be claimed about Pope Francis. The Catholic World is not going to accede to any request by the Vatican without this. After 34 days when proof of life could be given, there is no more need for anyone to pay any deference to the claims of Cardinal Parolin about the situation. The forensic evidence that he, with his staff at Vatican News, is a total liar and has and is attempting to manipulate 1.4 Billion Catholics, is abundant and convincing enough for the common man.
This Debacle will have the most excellent results, however …
Indeed, if you look at the big picture, this debacle to control the narrative has shown how anyone who attempts to prop up Pope Francis in a lie, is dragged down with him into it. Thus, the events of the last 34 days nearly guarantee that the next Pope will not be pro-Bergoglian nor an advocate of his disastrous policies of mendacious fraud, because the utter disgust at what has been perpetrated to cover up a drug addict will be too much of a stain for any candidate to risk endorsing in any way.
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