Tag Archives: Marco Tosatti

‘The Pillar’ endorses Sodomy by its silence on Episcopal Appointments in Poland

February 25, 2024 Editor 8 Comments

A Call to Action by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

The History of Pope Francis’ Heretical Profession on ‘Gay Blessings’

Back in October, on the 14th, to be precise, I warned that the silence of Pope Francis in response to reproaches to his position on “gay blessings” could not go on forever without the imputation of the crime of heresy. I pointed out the day before, that the CIA was going to urge through all its controlled agencies that the declaration of Pope Francis as a heretic over this controversy was wrong. That is because even run-of-the-mill opposition sites as Mundabor on October 6th were insisint that a council be called to depose Pope Francis as a heretic.

The responses of Pope Francis to the July Dubia of the Cardinals were written by Cardinal Fernandez, then an Archbishop, a man who is a known serial cover-upper of sexual abuse, as I reported here on October 4th, 2023. So his motivation was obvious. Indeed, in the days before this same Cardinal made clear that Pope Francis’s intention in ‘Amoris Laetitia’, was to contradict the Gospel and the Council of Trent.

That response of Pope Francis to the July Dubia made it clear by October 3, 2023, that it was his intention to sacriligeously and blasphemously permit the blessing of sodomitic unions.

You can read the entire coverage of FromRome.info about ‘Fiducia supplicans’ and the reaction of Catholics around to the world to it, here. You can read my editorials and initiatives against it, here.

A Catholic Response

Cognizant of all these things, though I had called for a provincial council to rebuke Pope Francis and/or depose him many times before, by which I was prepared to urge the matter with greater clarity, I launched the Sutri Initiative for this purpose on October 20, 2023, after spending several days at Sutri Italy, considering carefully what could be done to save Holy Mother Church from these perverse heretics.

The unCatholic Response

Since that time, following the declared intention of Steve O’Reilly, the CIA agent, most online Catholic outlets in the English speaking have remained scandalously silent at the gross heresy expressed in the replies of Pope Francis to the questions of the Cardinals expressed in the Dubia of July: scandalously, because it is intolerable to hold that a public manifest heretic can be the Roman Pontiff, or that Pope Francis does not need to recant his pro-sodomy position.

And not only have many outlets remained silent, but some have openly embraced this homo-heresy, as FromRome.info has documented: Church Militant did so on October 20, LifeSite News did so on the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, 2024 , etc..

And as I detailed on October 15, 2023, this silence is all part of the 9 ways to make the Catholic Church implode, which is the goal of the U.S. Government plan for the destruction of our holy faith.

The Agenda of ‘The Pillar’

Now, “The Pillar”, an electronic journal of recent foundation, which I have often criticized for the errors it pushes, has continued its trajectory of gaslighting the Catholic world by pretending that it is tolerable for a manifest pertinacious heretic to nominate Bishops, as they do in their article above, about recent and future episcopal nominations in Poland.

They say nothing in the open, but the silence is designed to make you think nothing has changed, all is well, with the apostasy of ‘Fiducia supplicans’, as their 3 editorials have attempted to proclaim since it was published on Dec. 18, 2023.

I am not a betting man, but if I were, I would counsel a bet that “The Pillar” is a CIA front, would win.

The Grave Danger to the Catholic Church in Poland

But this sin is not only imputable to ‘The Pillar’. The Bishops of Poland are united in this same sin, because despite the strong objection of many of them to ‘Fiducia supplicans’ and their united public declaration that they would not permit the blessing of sodomitic unions in Poland, they are allowing Pope Francis, the public manifest and now pertinacious heretic appoint their bishops, a thing which is a diabolically reckless thing to do, for it puts the entire Church of Poland into the most grave danger of perversion, heresy and schism from Christ.

If you are a Catholic from Poland, as I know many of my readers are, make it your Lenten sacrifice this year to make known to your bishop the grave sin of such a way of acting. Rather, instead, they should regard the Apostolic see impeded by Pope Francis on account of his refusal to speak to the Church as a Catholic and on account of the impossibility that a rightly formed Catholic conscience permit one to continue to regard him as to be obeyed and capable of executing the office of Pope in a manner conducive to the salvation of souls, as I have detailed in two articles, on the right Catholics have to refuse him obedience, now, and the state of impedition into which he has put the See of Rome.

The Kind of Spiritual Warfare being used against the Church

As we can see, then, a very clever and devious tactic is being used against the Faithful. It is based on sloth, ignorance and calculates on the cowardice and/or inexperience in conflict of the average Catholic. It urges non-action to error, so that by being compromised by silence, individuals and local churches, one by one, can be suborned to the same evil and erroneous agenda.

This was the tactic used to get the Catholic world to accept that Pope Benedict XVI abdicated on Feb. 28, 2013. And it is the same tactic today.

Because everyone who refuses to see that the position of Pope Francis on ‘Gay Blessings’ is heretical, blasphemous, sacrilegious and directly opposed to the 2nd Commandment and the Our Father, will by his ignoring of the problem, be seduced into going along to get alone. And silent toleration of any kind, which consists in not requesting he be solemnly rebuked and/or removed from office, will lead to this.

Thus Don Minutella, Andrea Cionci, Marco Tosatti, Edward Pentin, Diana Montagna, Ann Barnhardt, Mark Dockerty, Michael Matt, Eric Sammons, and any other Catholic influencer who fails to call for the removal of Pope Francis from office is in fact committing this same sin. — I mention these names only as an example, since to my knowledge, none of them has urged Pope Francis be removed from office by the only means which is juridically and canonically valid, in provincial council. Nor can those who hold that he is not or never was the Pope fail to call for this, for ideological reasons, because any sane and faithful Catholic wants and will always prefer the solution which will be accepted by the whole Church, and will always put his personal opinions, views and reputation in the service of that end.

If you are a craven coward, a disgraceful servant, or the like, you will risk nothing to defend Holy Mother Church and our immaculate Catholic Faith, from this heresy. And thus by silence be led to offer your children and grandchildren on the altar of Sodom, because as this error is more and more accepted — as we can see in the daily news — the LGBTQ ideology will take hold of parishes and dioceses and religious orders to the utter moral and doctrinal corruption of the whole Mystical Body, the damnation of more than 1 billions souls.

We all must act against this, or we each shall individually be responsible.

My Personal Invitation to all Catholics & to Translators

Participate in the Sutri Initiative. Learn about the history of the provincial council of Sutri in 1046, here. Study the Canonical and Juridical way a heretical pope can be deposed, here.

And if you can translate these 3 documents into Polish or any language, please do so for the sake of the salvation of the Church in your native lands.

So far these documents have been translated into French and Italian, from their English originals.

There is still a need for Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and all the other languages spoken daily by Catholics such as Arabic, Romanian, Hungarian, Slovak, Czech, Hindu etc..

In addition to the Sutri Initiative you can do ….

In addition, I encourage all to form a Committee against Apostasy in their own diocese and promote knowledge of how important it is to hold fast to the Catholic Faith against the homo heresy. It is indeed disappointing to me, that in the last 2 months, only 1 Catholic responded to that holy and zealous initiative.

Moreover, urge your Bishops to convene a Provincial Council in their own ecclesiastical Province, to solemnly condemn ‘Fiducia supplicans’ as a scandalous document contrary to the Catholic Faith, promoting the homo-heresy, inducing priests to use the Name of God in vain and transgressing the duty of all Christians to keep that Name hallowed. Anything your Bishops declare outside of a provincial council has little or no CANONICAL authority. Furthermore, if in a provincial council anywhere in the world, Catholic Bishops call upon the Bishops of the Roman Province to do the same thing and rebuke Pope Francis to the face, it will be greatly conducive to convincing these Roman Bishops to act.

Debates, News

Russo to Schneider: We must believe Benedict, when he says he is still the pope

February 9, 2021 Editor 2 Comments

MARCOTOSATTI.COM

Authorized English translation by FromRome.Info

Due Papi, Due Domande Impellenti, Una Risposta urgente.

by Marco Tosatti

Dear Friends and enemies of Stilum Curiae: a friend of our community, Sergio Russo, author of the book about which about which we spoke some time ago, Sei tu quello o dobbiamo aspettarne un altro? (Are you the one or should we expect another?), has sent us a reflection which seems to us particularly interesting and stimulating on the strange situation in which we we are living, and about which we have spoken in recent days. Have a good read!

§ § §

Two Impelling Questions
which necessitate an urgent answer

by Sergio Russo

The first is: “Is Pope Francis a pope in every way, or not?”

The second, which is consequent upon the first, is: “Is Pope Benedict XVI still the pope, or not?”

I offer my personal contribution to the present debate, taking occasion also from the recent intervention by the Mons. Athanasius Schneider (dated Feb. 28, 2020) published originally in English at the site LIfeSite News, and also in French translation on the blog, Le Blog de Jeanne Smits.

Therefore, I will list here simply a series of facts, and not of argumentations, leaving it to the Reader to form his own opinion on the matter, knowing well, however, that contra factum non valet argumentum (against a fact no argument is valid).

Both academics and experts of things theological, as well as simple faithful, have noted how, from the date of March 13, 2013, even unto today, there has been created an unheard of situation, never before happening in the two thousand year history of the Church: the co-existence and co-habitation in the Vatican of two popes.
All of these, however, know well that the expression, “pope emeritus”, plays on the congruence/assonance of “Bishop Emeritus” and “Cardinal Emeritus”, and that, besides, it is not ordained by any canon of ecclesiastical law, neither past nor present …
Moreover, it is to be noted – and here it basically returns to the same univocity which occurs in effect in the principle — just as there is, thus, no “priest emeritus”, so also, both the academic and the faithful have always known (but perhaps today the way to understand things has changed?) that there absolutely is no other kind of pope, neither Emeritus nor Presiding, and more so, and this by “una contraddizione, che nol consente … (a contradiction which does not consent to it)”, as Dante would say, since — and all believing Catholics have always held this as valid — the pope is the symbol and guarantor of unity in the Catholic Church, and She is one Body (though Mystical, but a true body), which cannot have but one sole Head!
Therefore, not a two-headed Body, which would be a monstrosity, and neither a headless body, which would instead be a deficiency: as a matter of fact, one alone is the Christ, one alone is the Church, one alone the Faith, one alone the Vicar of Christ and one alone the Head of the Church …. and this is what the two-thousand year Magisterium of the Church has always affirmed, without the least hesitation!
Pope Francis, on the one hand would be the pope in every way, since he was licitly elected by all the Cardinals, united in a lawful Conclave (and which consequently is indubitable)
On the other hand, we are given to know that the election of Pope Francis (and this is also indubitable) might not be equally valid, since according to a declaration — never denied — of the now late Belgian Cardinal Godfried Dannels, present in his book-biography, which reports the admissions of the prelate made to the journalists, J. Mettepenningen and K. Schelkens, the said Cardinal revealed to them that a group of Cardinals and Bishops (to which he also belonged) worked for years to prepare for the election of J. M. Bergoglio, seeing that all of these porporati were opponents of Joseph Ratzinger: it was, in fact, a group which was kept secret, which the same Cardinal Danneels defined as “a mafia club, which bore the name of St. Gall”.
And this type of agreement, according to the Apostolic Constitution of Saint John Paul II, Universi Dominic Gregis, which regulates the “vacancy of the Apostolic See and the election of the Roman Pontiff”, falls under a latae sententiae excommunication, as is clearly affirmed in nn. 77, 81, and 82:

« Confirming also the prescriptions of our Predecessors, I prohibit anyone, even if he is marked with the dignity of the Cardinalate, to make agreements, while the Pope is alive and without having consulted him, about the election of His Successor, or promise votes, or take decisions in this regard in private meetings » (n.79);
« The Cardinal Electors are to abstain, moreover, from every form of vote-canvassing, agreements, promises or other pledges of any kind, which can constrain them to give or deny their vote to one or another. If such in reality would happen, even if under the obligation of a vow, I decree that such a pledge be null and invalid and that no one is bound to observe it; and from this moment I impose the excommunication latae sententiae upon the transgressors of this prohibition.» (n.81);
« Equally, I forbid to the Cardinals to make, before an election, formal agreements, whether to receive pledges of common agreement, obliging themselves to put them into effect in the case that one of them be elevated to the Pontificate. Even these promises, as much as they might be made, even under the obligation of an oath, I declare null and invalid » (n.82).
It is good to repeat that the “Renunciation” of Benedict XVI (according to his own admission) was truly made in full awareness and without any constraint … and yet that such a “renunciation” cannot be held to be truly such, since (and this is the seventh one which has occurred in the course of the two thousand years of Church history) all those who did renounce the papacy afterwards returned to their prior status as before thier election: and hence he who was a Bishop or Cardinal, returned to being a Bishop or Cardinal … he who was before a hermit, returned to be a hermit … (if one remembers the events of Pope Celestine V and Pietro da Morrone!), and hence none remained pope (not even an “emeritus”, or any other kind), by continuing to wear the white cassock, by maintaining the papal coat of arms, by signing wtih the name of the Pontiff, etc..
Hence, just as, if one must believe that Benedict XVI posited his “renunciation” in total autonomy and independence … so and equally, one must believe in what He himself declared: “… When, on April 19 nearly 8 years ago I accepted to assume the petrine ministry … from that moment on I was engaged always and for always by the Lord … The “always” is also a “for always”, there is no longer a return to the private: My decision to renounce the active exerciste of the ministry, does not revoke this ” (Benedict XVI, Wednesday General Audience of Feb. 27, 2013, Piazza S. Petro).
And hence, through his own same admission, Benedict XVI is always and still pope, whether others say so or not.
Therefore, in this case more than ever, there is required by all a firm intellectual coherence: if we ought to believe and hold as true the words of the Holy Father about His own renunciation, we ought, on the other hand and equally, believe and hold as true the just mentioned words pronounced by Benedict XVI, which affirm that he remains still and always pope!
In conclusion, how can one explain, then, such an apparent and present unresolved situation in the Church … what, in substance, ought we hold to have clear ideas and not to let ourselves be overwhelmed, even us, by such a contemporary “confusion”?

The solution is supplied us both by the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, but as something requiring of us the highest attention and correct discernment ….

It is Our Lady Herself, in fact, who asks us to pay attention to Her words, left in our own days at Fatima, in which She speaks, both of the Holy Father, and of a Bishop dressed in white.

The Divine Providence has also arranged, also in our own days, that Pope John Paul II elevated to the honors of the altar the Blessed Ann Catherine Emmerich, making in this way known to all believers her singular visions, especailly those in which she saw “the Church of the two popes”, the Church of always, faithful to the Magisterium, at whose head is the Holy Father, and another “new” church: big, strange and extravagant … (and, moreover, that the warnings, in part from the Mother of God are truly very many: the Miraculous Medal, La Salette, Fatima, Garabandal, the Marian Movement of Priests and many, many others …).

And, at last, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (in nn. 675-677), in which it informs, that, in our own days, all the faithful will be called to confront a “final test”, capable of shocking the faith of many believers, since in it there will be revealed the “mystery of iniquity”, able to provide an apparent solution to contemporary men, under the form of a religious impostiture, and it will be then that we will have to decide on which side to stand: whether with the Anti-Christ (the Anti-Church and the Anti-Gospel, as even John Paul II was wont to say), though this at the cost of apostasy from the Truth, in joining in such a manner the “new church”, great and lauded by the world, as ecological and ecumenical, which concerns itself primarily with the poor … or if we would remain with the Church of always, even if it is today seen in a bad light by the world, which reputs Her as integralist and fundamentalist, to remain with the holy Magisterium, held even today as antiquated, and faithful to the Gospel of Christ, the one and true God, our Savior and Redeemer: “Whom we hold most dear!”

This is an authorized translation of the original at

MARCOTOSATTI.COM

News

Viganò openly questions whether China forced Benedict to resign, St Gallen Mafia plotted invalid election

July 26, 2020 Editor 10 Comments

by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

Many Catholics have been waiting for it for more than a year: the time when Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò would publicly admit that the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI may be invalid, or that the Conclave of 2013 may be invalid.

Yesterday, in his interview with Marco Tosatti, Archbishop Viganò opened both questions, saying (Red added on key passages):

Marco Tosatti: Don’t you think that in the end the Report that everyone is waiting for will be published?

Abp. Viganò: If it is possible to shed light on this affair, this will happen despite the Vatican: the interests at stake are enormous and directly affect the very top of the Church, and not only for questions of a doctrinal, moral, or canonical nature, but also for political and diplomatic aspects that have seen the Holy See become the object of a coup d’état with the complicity of those who should have defended it in its sovereignty and independence. What did not succeed during the pontificate of Benedict XVI was brought to fruition after his resignation. How can we hope that the one who is indebted for his own election to McCarrick – who was one of the main proponents of the secret agreement with China – will be able to clarify a series of events that involve him personally, demonstrating the connivances with the Chinese dictatorship against Catholics faithful to the Holy See and perhaps also the responsibility of that regime for the resignation of Pope Benedict? How can we imagine that the murky events of Saint Gallen will become clear, when it was there that the conspirators organized the election of Bergoglio? And how can we believe that the Church will purify herself of the corruption and vice of her clerics and prelates, when they are the ones who have taken power and who are promoted to the highest levels in a web of complicity between heretics, perverts, and traitors?

The one who ought to investigate the scandals is heavily involved in the appointment, promotion, and protection of those who are guilty: Bergoglio has surrounded himself with compromised and thus blackmailed personalities, whom he has no qualms about getting rid of as soon as they risk compromising him in his media image.

Let’s not forget that the legitimization of homosexuality is part of the agenda of the New World Order – to which the Bergoglian church adheres openly and unconditionally – not only for its destabilizing value in the social body, but also because sodomy is the principal instrument with which the Enemy intends to destroy the Catholic priesthood, corrupting the souls of the Ministers of God.

For this reason, at least as far as what seems possible, the entire truth about McCarrick will never officially come to light.

News

Viganò, Magister, Tosatti: all attack Pope Benedict XVI in mourning

July 3, 2020 Editor 19 Comments

by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

I am continually amazed how some people can wade through hundreds of pages of text to attack a person, but refuse to read 1 word to his defense, all the while claiming to be honest and devout Catholics.

The latest egregious case of this is the position take by Archbishop Viganò and the Italian Vaticanista Magister, condoned after the fact by Marco Tosatti with his publication of his anonymous editorial signed by Msgr. X.

And, yes lately, it does seem that Tosatti’s website has become a newspaper devoted to promoting the Archbishop, as many have noticed. In fact, Viganò and Tosatti are in direct communication and Tosatti publishes everything Viganò wants to publish as part of his own personal publicity campaign which appears more and more, each week, to be a campaign to be the next pope, since it pronounces itself on a variety of key issues in the life of the Church, through the publication of sometimes even personal letters with others. All this, even though Archbishop Viganò holds no munus in the Church to do anything of the kind.

But on to the matter at hand.

Viganò in recent days had Tosatti publish a long letter of criticism of Vatican II (see here). But why criticize Vatican II now? It is not like the current man in control of the Vatican is a shining exemplar and paragon of every virtue who does not know what Vatican II is about. We have 7 years of scandal that could be talked about — and Viganò has talked about that in part — but Viganò no longer names Bergoglio, and his demand that Bergoglio resign has been left in the air, with no action.

But here in Italy, the question of Pope Benedict XVI’s renunciation has become the hot issue. And one of the chief hermeneutical arguments for the invalidity of the Renunciation is the magisterial teaching of Pope Benedict XVI, on February 14, 2013, during his meeting with the clergy of Rome. In that meeting he did not speak to the clergy as a man who was resigning the Papacy, he spoke instead about how the Council was misinterpreted by the press and misrepresented to the world, and that the clergy of Rome need to return to the texts and read the Council for itself, without the presuppositions of what the press wanted you to think it meant.

I wrote about this speech by Pope Benedict XVI, showing how it conclusively affirms the way he wants his Declaratio interpreted. The Holy Father is, in substance, saying nothing strange or novel, he is merely saying in his own way, that Canon 17 should be observed, namely, that the Declaratio should be read in accord with the norm of Canon Law which requires that words in the Code be understood in their proper meaning, and when there is a doubt, read according to their sense in parallel passages of the Code of Canon Law.

This speech by Pope Benedict XVI was discussed by Don Alessandro Minutella and myself in a hour long program recently (here specifically, and if you want to know about the Mafia of St. Gallen, see part II here). In that program, we laid down a challenge to the Sacred Hierarchy and clergy of Italy to respond to the evidence. Viganò’s letter on Vatican II is clearly that response. Those who deny that Pope Benedict XVI is the pope, and all now insist that the Declaratio does not mean what the rules of Latin grammar says it must mean, have to attack the truth of that. And if not a direct attack on that truth, an indirect attack on the rules by which you are lead back to it.

So the speech of Pope Benedict XVI had to be attacked.

At the same time, Sandro Magister, who makes efforts to defend Bergoglio whenever he can, rose to the challenge of Viganò, who had attacked the god of Vatican II, using as he did the clever trick of blaming Viganò openly for being unfaithful to Pope Benedict XVI in his discourse on Vatican II. Magister’s article can be read here. Massimo Borghesi commented on it here. Magister accuses Viganò of being on the rim of schism. A good narrative trick to trigger all Viganò fans and those deluded by putting hope in a man who affirms Bergoglio, an archheretic and schismatic, is the pope. And Magister is clever enough to cite a speech from 2005, lest he draw attention to the speech of 2013.

Finally, Marco Tosatti publishes an anonymous essay which attacks Pope Benedict XVI while arguing against Magister’s charge of schism, with the outrageous accusation that Pope Benedict XVI resigned validly to prepare the way intentionally for Bergoglio. The title of the article leaves no room for doubt about that against which it was launched: BXVI’s never clarified Renunciation gives Viganò reason.

The title alone is a subterfuge. Only those who refuse to read the Declaration in the Latin cannot find the clarity in it they seek.

But the villainy of such an accusation is not exceeded by the villainy that would publish it. It is clearly a direct attack on the person of the Holy Father to discredit him in the eyes of Catholics who uphold the laws of the Church. And this during the time he is mourning the sickness and death of his brother, having been deprived of the opportunity to remain with him until the end and celebrate his funeral personally.

But it appears rather that what we are seeing is a very cleverly designed narrative control, to both anoint an Archbishop who holds no munus in the Church, while attacking the one who holds still the Petrine Munus. It allows the forces which hate Pope Benedict XVI to have Viganò play the good cop, and Magister and Msgr. X play the bad cop. But the result is the same as what Bergoglio has always sustained: Benedict resigned so that I can be the Pope, accept that and shut up!

As regards the speech of Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, and to discuss it on its merits: it is clear that the Holy Father explained a very sound forensic and catholic principle of textual interpretation, which Vatican II merits to have applied to it, regardless of all other considerations. Having read some of the conciliar texts in the Latin, I know that they are much more Catholic than the vernacular translations make them appear, and did enact a reform which was never put into action. What we got instead was the Aggiornamento of Paul VI. But, neither was free of errors, and the Council clearly never intended to give us texts which were infallible.

But forensic techniques are the nemeses of all Mafia. And that is why they are being ignored by the Sacred Hierarchy today, and many a layman who hangs on their tail coats.

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Guest Editorials, News

Marco Tosatti: The Now uncertain Future of the Order of Malta

April 30, 2020 Editor 1 Comment

by Marco Tosatti

An English translation of the original Italian, entitled, Ordine di Malta, il Futuro: Nulla è escluso. Anche clamoroso.

Dear friends and enemies of Stilum Curiae we offer you a reflection on the situation that has arisen after the death of the Grand Master of the Order of Malta. With the death of Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto, which occurred shortly after midnight on April 29, a not exactly reassuring scenario opens up for the Order of Malta. The disappearance of a leader – who, in this case, is both ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ – is always in itself something which quakes the system, but even more so – we believe – it will be for the Order of St. John who has already been experiencing a deep institutional crisis for at least four years.

Suffice it to say that already in the afternoon hours preceding the official announcement of the departure, there were discordant news (which sources tell us were sent by an imprudent letter signed by Prince Erich von Lobkowicz, powerful president of the German Association of the Knights of Malta) on the Grand Master’s state of health, who was declared dead prematurely, with a very quick update of the Wikipedia page, later corrected, following an official communiqué of the Order and the letter “signed” by the Grand Commander (the Order of Malta’s second office and responsible for religious life), the 80-year-old Portuguese, Fra’ Ruy Gonçalo do Valle Peixoto de Villas Boas.

Such a thing would never have happened in other times, not least because it is presumed that news concerning the health of the head of a religious Order who is also – a unicum in the current legal panorama – Head of State must necessarily be filtered through the entourage of close and, hopefully, trusted collaborators.

The late Grand Master had personally announced – in an unusual letter dated 24 February last – that he had health problems linked to a diagnosed throat cancer that would have taken him away from many institutional commitments because of the treatment he would have had to undergo; in that same letter, in a truly anomalous way, Dalla Torre had, among other things, written “The important decisions will remain in my hands”, as if to reassure that no one would take advantage of them. But why write it, we wonder?

All these creaks give the impression of a very frail institution in itself, which seems to forget its almost a thousand years of history of battles and victories for the defense of Christianity.

A very weak government, that of Brother Giacomo Dalla Torre, chosen for his well known bonhomie, for his integrity but also for the undisputed closeness of his noble family to the Vatican world: his grandfather Giuseppe was director of L’Osservatore Romano, while his brother, Giuseppe himself, was for decades (until a few months ago) the influential president of the Vatican Tribunal.

A government that has also shown its flaws and its pockets of incapacity since the lieutenancy that Dalla Torre assumed as a “buffer” to the wound inflicted on the sovereignty of the Order with the expulsion of the former Grand Master Fra’ Matthew Festing by the now untrusted Teutonic-Vatican maneuver devised by the first hunted and then reinstated Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager, who also asked for the head of Card. Raymond Leo Burke, freezing him the office (which still formally exists today) of “Cardinalis Patronus”.

A singular coincidence of dates: Dalla Torre was elected Lieutenant precisely on April 29, 2017 – under the supervision of Msgr. Angelo Becciu (now Cardinal, Prefect of the Congregation of Saints), at the time the most powerful Substitute to the Vatican Secretariat of State and very faithful to Pope Bergoglio, appointed “Special Delegate” of the Pontiff to the Order – and the Lord calls him to himself on the same day, three years later.

Both as Lieutenant and even more so as Grand Master, on May 2, 2018 behind the clear placet of the Transtevere, alongside the undisputed moral and religious qualities of great value, Dalla Torre was never able to show the institutional attitude that contingencies demanded, very often allowing a form of heterodox management of the Order over which he had been placed in charge. It allowed all three Italian Grand Priories (which would be the territorial government bodies which run clinics, welfare facilities, charitable works, and to which the Order of Malta’s Italian Relief Corps [CISOM] is linked) to be managed by “procurators” and not by religious (a form of indirect commissioning). It allowed the Pope’s Special Delegate to block the novitiate for the new “professed” (i.e. those knights who take a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience and become the “first class” of the Order), thus immobilising the Order’s religious life, now reduced to a mere decorative aspect, which, if not reactivated, will be destined to be quickly wiped out. Don’t forget, among others, also the big slip-up of the prohibition in the ceremonies of the Order of the Mass in ancient rite (see here our comment at the time): an act certainly imprudent, probably the result of internal institutional blackmail, but which was also an inappropriate form of plagiarism against a presumed “apostolic” will, almost as if to demonstrate that in the Order of Malta – already badly seen in itself because it would embody (at least in principle) a certain elitist and excessively aristocratic approach to Catholicism – no voice is given to the “traditionalist” seditious people; it was also an indirect attack on the sensibility of the predecessor Festing, notoriously a lover of Tridentine spirituality; in short, it was a testimony to an alignment which probably was not necessary. It seems at least suggestive to consider that Dalla Torre died at the first light of day when the Church, in the calendar of the traditional mass, commemorates the Universal Patronage of Saint Joseph, who is also the patron saint of good death.

Beyond this – which in any case constitutes a “political” consideration of the style of government but is certainly not a moral judgement (which would appear ungenerous, even before being reckless) on the person – now with the death of Dalla Torre there are very problematic scenarios for the life of the Order.

First of all, it should be noted that the death of a Head of State, which occurs in a circumstance such as the one we are experiencing due to the planetary blockade of the pandemic, certainly suffers ceremonial repercussions, starting with the uncertainty about the funeral: Certainly, the Order of Malta is a subject of international law that enjoys, therefore, sovereignty, independence and also extraterritoriality, for which the grotesque measures containing the Italian legislation on the subject would certainly not be applicable; however, objectively, we do not believe that a rite proportionate to the dignity of a “Most Eminent Highness” is conceivable. Probably there will only be a ceremony restricted to members of the Sovereign Council and professed knights; perhaps one could hope for the consolidated practice for which, in the trigesimo of the disappearance, state funerals will be officiated in the presence of heads of state and the diplomatic corps. We shall see; of course it is a pity that the head of a religious order, who is in any case a very pious and devout man, cannot have a worthy moment of extreme greeting with the honours he is due.

But beyond the pitiless protocol problems – although in this world form is substance – the institutional scenario that opens with his death is much more significant.

The Grand Magistry’s communiqué, issued last night around 1.00 a.m., informed that “According to Article 17 of the Constitution of the Sovereign Order of Malta, the Grand Commander … has assumed the functions of Interim Lieutenant and will remain head of the Sovereign Order of Malta until the election of the new Grand Master”.

Now the problem is really big. Already from his Lieutenancy and then, in his Magisterium, Dalla Torre was to conduct and conclude the Order’s constitutional reform. Commissions were organised (in which, however, the professed religious knights were largely marginalised), there were exchanges of documents (all internal acts, nothing public, of course), and then everything fell into oblivion, in a form of acquiescence to the status quo: very imprudent for those who cannot count fifty years of government experience among them.

Everything is now in the hands of the Grand Commander.

Yes, of course, formally that is the case, but it is clear that an 80-year-old Portuguese gentleman (and not exactly sprightly at what one sees and knows), who has remained confined to Portugal, will not be able to manage a complex situation like this on his own, and will therefore need help. There is no doubt that the obscure Grand Chancellor Boeselager will pull the strings… but the first obstacle is the incomplete reform, which is therefore also useless. Because, on closer inspection, the Order is in the same stalemate that led to the election of Dalla Torre.

Art. 13 of the Constitutional Charter of the Order, in force today, prescribes that “The Grand Master is elected for life … from among the Professed Knights, with at least ten years of Perpetual Vows, if they are less than fifty years old; for the Professed Knights of higher age, who have been members of the Order for at least ten years, three years of Perpetual Vows are sufficient”. (paragraph 1), and then continues: “The Grand Master and the Lieutenant of the Grand Master must meet the noble requirements prescribed for the category of Knights of Honour and Devotion.” (paragraph 2). What does this mean?

For non-experts, the Grand Master of the Order of Malta cannot but be an aristocrat (which also seems logical to us for an Order that qualifies as “noble”); and the Constitution provides that the Head of the Order is chosen not “from among the knights of honour and devotion” (who may have been included in this category also with a “motu proprio”, also for particular merits, without having the right to do so heraldically) but that he “has the requisites required to be admitted among the knights of honour and devotion”: 4/4 (= both father’s and mother’s side) of nobility for 200 years, or: 250 years of nobility for the paternal line in addition to 200 years of the other 2/4 in addition to the amnesty for an grandfather, or: 300 years paternal line in addition to 200 years of the other 2/4 in addition to the amnesty for an grandfather, or: 350 years, paternal line in addition to 200 years of another quarter, or: 450 years paternal line.

This was one of the rules that the reform was supposed to modify, at least allowing for the possibility to range among the professed members (called “first class”), perhaps extending (this was the hypothesis) eligibility also to knights of grace and devotion (which would be the step immediately below honour and devotion), but this was not the case. And therefore the rule in force is the one mentioned above.

Given this, who could be elected Grand Master given these rules? Well, the game is complex because, on closer inspection, there is not a wide selection from which to chose. Some are candidates “only on paper”, such as Friar Luigi Naselli of Gela (born in 1930, former Grand Prior of Naples and Sicily, resigned for health reasons) and Friar Gherardo Hercolani Fava Simonetti (born in 1941, also a former Grand Commander, but very ill health); finally there would be Friar Pierre de Bizemont (born in 1944, the only French professed with eligibility requirements). Naturally, the former Grand Master Festing, born in 1949, must be added to these few eligible candidates, and perhaps put before him, for whom technically the great return is not excluded, considering the controversial resignation that followed.

The same Grand Commander could not be elected, coming from the ranks of the knights of grace and devotion, as well as the Italians fra’ Carlo d’Ippolito di Sant’Ippolito (an energetic Calabrian gentleman born in 1933, former Grand Commander) and fra’ Marco Luzzago (born in 1950, “commendatore di giustizia”, in charge of the castle of Magione), also admitted as knights of grace and devotion. To be excluded, of course, all the other professed from the other ranks.

There would then be hypotheses that would benefit a hypothetical Italian reconquest of Via Condotti, because there could also be another professed knight with the noble requisites provided for in art. 13, paragraph 2, but who is lacking those provided for in paragraph 1, such as the forty-four year old Friulan Fra’ Nicolò Custoza de Cattani (who took the solemn vows in 2016, but would have to wait until 2026 to be eligible). And then there is another Italian, who, however, today is on the verge of achieving the requirements of solemn profession: he is Friar Alessandro de Franciscis from Campania, born in 1955, the current director of the Bureau Médical of Lourdes, who would complete his three years of profession next December. Therefore, in a hypothetical procrastination linked to the contingencies of covid-19, the hypothesis of his election could also materialize. However, de Franciscis is not only a highly esteemed doctor who plays a role of clear prestige in one of the most important Marian shrines in Christendom, but also has a political past among the ranks of the centre-left area (former DC, then Margherita, UDEUR, Democratic Party) which led him to hold the position of president of the province of Caserta in 2005 and to be unpleasantly involved in legal problems inherent in that position, which were then resolved positively for him. Certainly since 2009 he has not been in politics, but it is known that in certain circles certain things never cease to be considered, especially when it comes to electing what, though sui generis, is still a Head of State.

Of course, the whole issue will be played out over time, which will certainly not be lacking given the circumstances surrounding the pandemic. It has to be said, however, that the Code which regulates the life of the Order and in art. 145 sets the time for the convocation of the Council of State (the elective body of the Grand Master, which constitutes a sort of “parliament” of the Order, in which the Grand Priories and national associations are also represented) at a maximum of three months, and therefore the time for hypothetical alliances is not so long; unless an exception to this rule is made, but even this is only a ‘school’ hypothesis.

It is clear, however, that, net of this, the influence of the German management of the Order, orchestrated by the ineffable Boeselager, will not delay in making itself felt. He certainly has almost all the national associations in his grip – a little more recalcitrant than the others – the Italian one, led by the Sicilian Riccardo Paternò di Montecupo, to which, although it has more members than the others, was arbitrarily prevented from expressing preference in the last elections in 2018 on the grounds that Italy was already represented by the three Grand Priories (two of which were already commissariats at the time) – and clearly can count on a sprawling system of control based on the management and distribution of economic funds and diplomatic privileges (just think of the choice of all the Order’s diplomats – among whom we recall the son of the very powerful former commander of the Vatican Gendarmerie Domenico Giani, now torpedoed by Pope Bergoglio). The professed (not only those “born noble”), on the other hand, are numerically few and above all appear very disorganized and demoralized; theirs is a stalemate, which seems to have neither breath nor room for action.

It is not excluded, however, that in all this the Holy See, through the special delegate Becciu, can once again extend its paw towards the Order, exercising a leading role in the election procedures, perhaps leading to the choice of a Lieutenant to temporarily hold the Order and ferry it towards the much sought after reform. But also the Lieutenant must have the requisites foreseen for the Grand Master (as we saw before quoting art. 13 par. 2 of the Constitutional Charter), and therefore the problem of the choice is also proposed, but in this case, it would be limited to only one year of government, in order to be able, at the moment of electing the new Grand Master, to range over several candidates. On the other hand, however, if this were to happen, the fracture linked to the consideration of the, albeit peculiar, sovereignty of the Order, which would be in some way vitiated by a form of external interference, would open up again.

In addition, however things go, the question of the “Cardinalis Patronus” comes up again, a position from which Raymond Burke has never been formally removed; the American Cardinal, who certainly does not need captions, elegantly never claimed any role after his ousting, which in fact created a “freeze” of his function, but considering that the rules of the Order assign to his office some tasks related to these phases, an honest definition of the problem would be desirable.

Naturally, these are political hypotheses. But the situation may not be as tragic as one thinks, and on the contrary, trusting in the strengthening of a “resistant” group, the pars sanior of the Order could take advantage of the moment for a change of course towards a more responsible autonomy and a better awareness of its past.

Let us watch.

§ § §

We were told that in our above essay of yesterday there are inaccuracies and incompleteness. We correct them here:

First of all, to the Italians should be added Fra Roggero Caccia Dominioni, Grand Prior Emeritus of Lombardy and Venice, who, however, is over ninety years old and does not enjoy excellent health … ; then it should be noted that both Fra’ Carlo d’Ippolito di Sant’Ippolito and Fra’ Marco Luzzago (who is Commendatore di Giustizia but does not reside at the Castello di Magione but at Villa Ciccolini, in Macerata) were received into the Order as Knights of Grace and Devotion and then integrated the evidence of nobility and have (as they say in technical jargon) “healed the missing quarters”, thus proving to have those requirements to be admitted among the Knights of Honour and Devotion. This practice – which at the time also followed the late Grand Master Fra’ Giacomo – is consolidated within the Order, since genealogical research can often be perfected over time, thus enabling the Order to integrate its process of nobility with new suitable and appropriate evidence.

To the eligible professed already indicated must then be added:

Brother Ludwig Hoffmann von Rumerstein, Austrian, born in 1937, former Grand Commander who was interim lieutenant in the transition phase immediately following Festing’s resignation;

Brother Karel Paar, born 1934, Grand Prior Emeritus of Bohemia;

Fra’ Elie de Comminges, French, born in 1935, who had been missing from the Order’s public life for several years;

Brother Ludwig von Call, Tyrolean, born 1934, professor of chemistry in Innsbruck.

Finally, they point out that although it is true that Friar Alexander de Franciscis will theoretically reach the proportion between years of age and years of profession required by Art. 13 of the Constitutional Charter next December, he lacks another requirement that the same article provides for in a not inconsiderable aside, namely that of being a member of the Order “for at least ten years”, having been received only in 2012.

The circle, therefore, between the old and the wretched, closes on de Bizemont, Luzzago, Paar, von Call… and Festing.

There are also twists and turns… If we were English, we could also place a bet on it.

Meanwhile, a ramshackle obituary informs us that the funeral of the late Grand Master will be held (it is not known when) “in a restricted manner” in the Church of Villa Malta on the Aventine (extraterritorial), announcing the celebration of “a solemn Requiem Mass on a date to be defined”. No mention of State funerals. Boh.

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News

Tosatti interviews Viganò: Conte’s shameful delusions of Omnipotence in his COVID-19 response

April 29, 2020 Editor 5 Comments

by Marco Tosatti

An English Translation of the Original, entitled: Intervista a Viganò. Conte, delierio di onnipotenza indecoroso. E illegale.

Dear Stilumcuriali, today we offer you an interview with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. Which touches on all the main themes of the moment we are living in Italy and in the Church. We think we should thank the Archbishop for the frankness and courage with which he expressed opinions that many people share, and fears that many live.

The interview comes out on 29 April, in memory of Saint Catherine of Siena. Enjoy reading.

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Your Excellency, the last Decree of President Giuseppe Conte dashed the hopes of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI) and prolonged the lock-down of Masses throughout Italy. Some canonists and experts in concordat law have expressed many reservations about the behavior of the Government. What are your thoughts on the matter?

The Concordat between the Holy See and the Italian State recognizes, as Her native right, the Church’s full freedom and autonomy in carrying out Her own Ministry, which sees the celebration of Holy Mass and the administration of the Sacraments as Her social and public expression, in which no authority can interfere, not even with the consent of the ecclesiastical authority itself, which is not the mistress but the administrator of the Grace conveyed by the Sacraments.

Jurisdiction over places of worship therefore belongs in its entirety and exclusively to the Ordinary of the place, who decides in full autonomy — for the good of the souls entrusted to his care as Shepherd — the functions that are celebrated there and by whom they are to be celebrated. It is not for the Prime Minister to authorize access to the churches, nor to legislate on what the faithful or the Minister of worship can or cannot do.

In addition to this, the pronouncements of eminent jurists and magistrates – including those of the Supreme Court – are very authoritative and they question the legitimacy of legislating through Prime-Ministerial Decrees, which violate the superior and prevailing rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the Italian Republic. Even if we are not talking about the Catholic Religion, particularly protected by its special status, the suspension of the right to freedom of worship implied by the Prime Minister’s Decrees is clearly illegitimate, and I trust that there will be those who wish to declare it officially, putting an end to this indecorous delusion of omnipotence of civil authority not only before God and His Church, but also before the faithful and citizens.

Many faithful and priests have felt abandoned and little protected by the Episcopal Conference and the Bishops.

It must be made clear, for the avoidance of misunderstandings, that the Episcopal Conference has no authority over the Bishops, who have full jurisdiction in their own Diocese, in union with the Apostolic See. And this is even more important at a time when we have understood how much the CEI is all too condescending, indeed succumbing, towards the Italian government.

Bishops do not have to wait for a body without any jurisdiction to tell them what to do: it is up to them to decide how to behave, with prudence and wisdom, to guarantee the Sacraments and the celebration of Mass to the faithful. And they can do so without having to ask either the CEI or the State, whose authority ends in front of the churchyard of our churches, and there it must stop.

It is unheard of that the Italian Episcopal Conference continues to tolerate such an abuse, which violates the divine right of the Church, violates a law of the State and creates a very serious precedent. And I believe that the communiqué issued on Sunday evening is also proof of the consent of the leaders of the Episcopate not only to the means, but also to the ends that this government proposes.

The supine silence of the CEI, and of almost all the Ordinaries, makes clear a situation of subordination to the State that has no precedent, and that was rightly perceived by the faithful and priests as a sort of abandonment of themselves: the scandalous raids of the public force in the church, even during the celebration of Mass, with sacrilegious arrogance that should have provoked an immediate and very firm protest by the Secretariat of State, are emblematic of this. The Ambassador of Italy to the Holy See should have been summoned, been presented a harsh Note of Protest for the very serious violation of the Concordat by the Government, and reserving the right to recall the Apostolic Nuncio to Italy if the illegitimate measure had not been withdrawn.

Cardinal Parolin, as sponsor of the President Conte, is in great embarrassment and in conflict of interest. It is clear that, instead of protecting the sovereignty and freedom of the Church in fidelity to its high institutional function as Secretary of State, Cardinal Parolin has shamefully chosen to side with his lawyer friend. Not even the economic interests of so-called Catholic volunteerism could justify such an option.

What interests are you referring to?

I am referring to the scandalous distribution of public funds intended for the hospitality of illegal immigrants, of which Pope Bergoglio and the CEI are largely beneficiaries and, at the same time, strenuous promoters. Another conflict of interest, this one, which places the Church in a position of gratitude towards the State, making it not entirely illegitimate the suspicion that the multiple silences of the CEI, including the one we have witnessed in recent months on the occasion of the alleged pandemic, are motivated by the fear of seeing the lucrative proceeds from the reception fade away. Let us not forget that the funds deriving from the 8×1000 are decreasing more and more, confirming the estrangement of the Italian faithful from a Church that seems to have no other purpose than that of favoring the ethnic substitution strongly desired by the globalist elite. I fear that this trend will be confirmed in the coming months, in response to the silence of the Bishops.

In all this, the position of Pope Francis seems contradictory: at first he ordered the Cardinal Vicar to close the churches of Rome before Conte issued the Decree; then he embarrassed him, publicly denying it and having them reopened. He encouraged the Masses in streaming and then spoke of a Gnostic attitude, encouraging the CEI to take a stand against the Government; but just yesterday he recommended to the faithful obedience to the provisions of the Decrees…

Bergoglio is no stranger to this kind of sudden change. As everyone well remembers, before the scandal broke out within the Order of Malta concerning the distribution of condoms in its hospitals, Francis had written a letter to the Cardinal Protector, Burke, in which he gave him very clear instructions about his duty to watch over the Order so that Catholic morals would be scrupulously followed. But when the news became public he did not hesitate to disavow His Eminence, commissioning the Order, demanding the Grand Master’s resignation and reinstating the Councillor who had been expelled precisely because he was responsible for that deplorable violation of morals.

In the case you mentioned, the Cardinal Vicar tried to defend his correctness, explaining that the order to close the churches had been given to him by His Holiness. In the most recent case of the CEI, the Communiqué issued on Sunday evening clearly had the approval of President Cardinal Bassetti, who in turn must have consulted with Francis. He disconcerted that, in the space of a few hours, St. Martha’s pulpit contradited the CEI and invited the faithful and priests to obey the government’s instructions, which is not only undue, but also a violation of conscience, harmful to the health of souls.

No one intends to expose the faithful to possible contagion, admitted and not granted that it is such a formidable eventuality; but the size of our churches and unfortunately the very small number of the faithful who normally attend them, allow safe distances to be respected both for individual prayer and for the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice or other ceremonies. Evidently the diligent legislators have not been going to church for a long time…

Let us not forget that the faithful have the right, as well as the duty, to attend Mass, to confess, to receive the Sacraments: this is a right that comes to them from being living members of the Mystical Body by virtue of Baptism. Pastors, therefore, have the sacred duty – even at the risk of their health and life itself, when required – to comply with this right of the faithful, and for this they must answer to God, not to the President of the Italian Episcopal Conference nor to the President of the Council.

In recent days, H.E. Mons. Giovanni d’Ercole has launched a stern warning to Count and the “scientific committee” in which he intimated: “You must give us the right to worship, or else we will take it back”. Strong and courageous words that seem to suggest a certain awakening in the consciences of the Pastors.

Monsignor D’Ercole spoke as a true Bishop does, with the authority that comes from Christ. Like him, I am sure, there are many other Pastors and priests who feel the responsibility towards the souls entrusted to them. But many remain silent, more so as not to uplift souls than out of fear. Precisely at this Easter time the Gospel parable of the Good Shepherd resounds in the liturgy; Jesus also mentions the mercenaries who do not care about the salvation of the sheep: let us not render in vain the divine warning and the example of the Savior, who gives his life for the sheep!

I take the liberty of addressing my confreres in the Episcopate: do you believe that, when in Mexico or Spain they closed the churches, banned processions, prohibited the use of the religious habit in public, things began differently? Do not allow the freedom of the Church to be restricted under the pretext of an alleged epidemic! Do not allow it either by the State or by the CEI! The Lord will ask you for an account of the souls who died without the Sacraments, of sinners who could not be reconciled with Him, of having allowed the faithful, for the first time in history since Constantine’s Edict, to celebrate Holy Easter with dignity. Your priests are not fearful, but heroic witnesses, and they suffer for the arbitrary orders you give them. Your faithful implore you: do not remain deaf to their cry!

These words seem to invite disobedience to ecclesiastical authority even before civil authority.

Obedience is ordered to Truth and Good, otherwise it is servility. We have arrived at such a dulling of consciences that we no longer realize what it means to “bear witness to the Truth”: do you believe that Our Lord will judge us for having been obedient to Caesar, when that means disobeying God? Is not the Christian bound to conscientious objection, even at work, when what is required of him violates divine law? If our Faith were based only on obedience, the Martyrs would not even have to face the torments to which civil law condemned them: it would have been enough to obey and burn a grain of incense to the statue of the Emperor.

We are not yet, at least in Italy, faced with the crucial choice between life and death; but we are asked to choose between the duty to honor God and worship Him, and obedience to the diktats of self-styled experts, a thousand times contradicted by the evidence of the facts.

I find it paradoxical that in this deception, which is now being revealed even to the most moderate observers of what is happening around us, the thankless task of having to bear witness to one’s own Faith before the wolves is imposed on the People of God, without being able to have their Shepherds at their side. That is why I exhort my Brothers to proudly resume their role as leaders, without camping as a pretext the observance of illegitimate and unreasonable norms. I make mine the words of Monsignor D’Ercole: “We do not need favors from you: we have a right to claim and this right must be recognized”!

Some might think that his words are “divisive” at a time when it is easy to exasperate the already proven souls of the citizens.

Unity in Faith and Charity is based on the salvation of souls, not to their detriment: neither the “interventions” of the CEI nor the smiling papal meetings with the Prime Minister, who has been granted an indulgent collaboration, which reveals connivance and collaboration. Proclaiming the truth is necessarily “divisive”, because truth is opposed to error, just as light is opposed to darkness. So said the Lord: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but division.” Luke 12:51

Admitted and not allowed that the coronavirus is so virulent and so deadly that it justifies the segregation of an entire people, indeed the whole world, well: at this very moment the sacraments and Mass are denied when they are most needed for eternal salvation?

From what you have said, Your Excellency, I seem to understand some of your perplexities about the nature of the Coronavirus: is it my impression or do you believe – as many doctors say – that someone wanted to take advantage of the pandemic for other purposes?

This is not the place to express my reservations about the so-called “pandemic”: I believe that authoritative scientists have been able to demonstrate what really happens, and what the masses believe, through a air-tight control of information that does not hesitate to resort to censorship to silence voices of dissent. It seems clear to me, however, that Covid-19 has provided an excellent opportunity, whether desired or not — we shall soon know — to impose on the population a restriction of freedom that is neither democratic nor good.

These are technical proofs of dictatorship, in which people are even being programmed to track people under the pretext of health and a hypothetical future resurgence of the virus. They think they can impose a tyrannical regime in which people who are not elected by anyone claim to determine what is lawful and what is not, what treatment to impose and what punishment to inflict on those who want to evade it. What is even more serious, all this happens with the support of part of the Hierarchy: if they had told us about it a few years ago, we would not have believed them.

A word of hope in conclusion?

There’s always a reason for hope, if you have a supernatural look. First of all, this epidemic has brought down many masks: those of the real powers, of the international lobbies that patent a virus and are also preparing to patent the vaccine, and at the same time push for it to be imposed on everyone, in a clamorous conflict of interest. At least now we know who they are and what they look like.

The masks of those who lend themselves to this farce have also fallen, sounding unjustified alarms and spreading panic among the people, creating a crisis not only in terms of health, but also in terms of economics and world politics. Here, too, we know who they are and what their plan is.

Finally, the mask of the anonymity of so many good people has fallen. We realized how much generosity, how much self-sacrifice, how much goodness is still around, despite everything. Doctors, nurses, priests and volunteers, certainly; but also many faceless and nameless people who help their neighbors, who bring comfort to those who suffer, who wake up from the torpor and begin to understand what is happening around them. An awakening of the good, of which the Lord is undoubtedly the author. He governs the destiny of the Church and the world, and He will not allow Evil to prevail.

Let us not forget that – as I recalled recently – Our Lady of Fatima promised Sister Lucy that before the end of time a Pope would consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart, and that this gesture of obedience would be followed by a period of peace. Let us therefore entrust ourselves, our families and our dear Italy under the mantle of the Most Blessed Virgin, trusting in Her words.

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An English Translation of the Original, entitled: Intervista a Viganò. Conte, delierio di onnipotenza indecoroso. E illegale.

Debates, News

Russo to Schneider: We must believe Benedict, when he says he is still the pope

March 6, 2020 Editor 14 Comments

MARCOTOSATTI.COM

Authorized English translation by FromRome.Info

Due Papi, Due Domande Impellenti, Una Risposta urgente.

by Marco Tosatti

§ § §

Two Impelling Questions
which necessitate an urgent answer

by Sergio Russo

The first is: “Is Pope Francis a pope in every way, or not?”

The second, which is consequent upon the first, is: “Is Pope Benedict XVI still the pope, or not?”

Both academics and experts of things theological, as well as simple faithful, have noted how, from the date of March 13, 2013, even unto today, there has been created an unheard of situation, never before happening in the two thousand year history of the Church: the co-existence and co-habitation in the Vatican of two popes.
All of these, however, know well that the expression, “pope emeritus”, plays on the congruence/assonance of “Bishop Emeritus” and “Cardinal Emeritus”, and that, besides, it is not ordained by any canon of ecclesiastical law, neither past nor present …
Moreover, it is to be noted – and here it basically returns to the same univocity which occurs in effect in the principle — just as there is, thus, no “priest emeritus”, so also, both the academic and the faithful have always known (but perhaps today the way to understand things has changed?) that there absolutely is no other kind of pope, neither Emeritus nor Presiding, and more so, and this by “una contraddizione, che nol consente … (a contradiction which does not consent to it)”, as Dante would say, since — and all believing Catholics have always held this as valid — the pope is the symbol and guarantor of unity in the Catholic Church, and She is one Body (though Mystical, but a true body), which cannot have but one sole Head!
Therefore, not a two-headed Body, which would be a monstrosity, and neither a headless body, which would instead be a deficiency: as a matter of fact, one alone is the Christ, one alone is the Church, one alone the Faith, one alone the Vicar of Christ and one alone the Head of the Church …. and this is what the two-thousand year Magisterium of the Church has always affirmed, without the least hesitation!
Pope Francis, on the one hand would be the pope in every way, since he was licitly elected by all the Cardinals, united in a lawful Conclave (and which consequently is indubitable)
On the other hand, we are given to know that the election of Pope Francis (and this is also indubitable) might not be equally valid, since according to a declaration — never denied — of the now late Belgian Cardinal Godfried Dannels, present in his book-biography, which reports the admissions of the prelate made to the journalists, J. Mettepenningen and K. Schelkens, the said Cardinal revealed to them that a group of Cardinals and Bishops (to which he also belonged) worked for years to prepare for the election of J. M. Bergoglio, seeing that all of these porporati were opponents of Joseph Ratzinger: it was, in fact, a group which was kept secret, which the same Cardinal Danneels defined as “a mafia club, which bore the name of St. Gall”.
And this type of agreement, according to the Apostolic Constitution of Saint John Paul II, Universi Dominic Gregis, which regulates the “vacancy of the Apostolic See and the election of the Roman Pontiff”, falls under a latae sententiae excommunication, as is clearly affirmed in nn. 77, 81, and 82:

« Confirming also the prescriptions of our Predecessors, I prohibit anyone, even if he is marked with the dignity of the Cardinalate, to make agreements, while the Pope is alive and without having consulted him, about the election of His Successor, or promise votes, or take decisions in this regard in private meetings » (n.79);
« The Cardinal Electors are to abstain, moreover, from every form of vote-canvassing, agreements, promises or other pledges of any kind, which can constrain them to give or deny their vote to one or another. If such in reality would happen, even if under the obligation of a vow, I decree that such a pledge be null and invalid and that no one is bound to observe it; and from this moment I impose the excommunication latae sententiae upon the transgressors of this prohibition.» (n.81);
« Equally, I forbid to the Cardinals to make, before an election, formal agreements, whether to receive pledges of common agreement, obliging themselves to put them into effect in the case that one of them be elevated to the Pontificate. Even these promises, as much as they might be made, even under the obligation of an oath, I declare null and invalid » (n.82).
It is good to repeat that the “Renunciation” of Benedict XVI (according to his own admission) was truly made in full awareness and without any constraint … and yet that such a “renunciation” cannot be held to be truly such, since (and this is the seventh one which has occurred in the course of the two thousand years of Church history) all those who did renounce the papacy afterwards returned to their prior status as before thier election: and hence he who was a Bishop or Cardinal, returned to being a Bishop or Cardinal … he who was before a hermit, returned to be a hermit … (if one remembers the events of Pope Celestine V and Pietro da Morrone!), and hence none remained pope (not even an “emeritus”, or any other kind), by continuing to wear the white cassock, by maintaining the papal coat of arms, by signing wtih the name of the Pontiff, etc..
Hence, just as, if one must believe that Benedict XVI posited his “renunciation” in total autonomy and independence … so and equally, one must believe in what He himself declared: “… When, on April 19 nearly 8 years ago I accepted to assume the petrine ministry … from that moment on I was engaged always and for always by the Lord … The “always” is also a “for always”, there is no longer a return to the private: My decision to renounce the active exerciste of the ministry, does not revoke this ” (Benedict XVI, Wednesday General Audience of Feb. 27, 2013, Piazza S. Petro).
And hence, through his own same admission, Benedict XVI is always and still pope, whether others say so or not.
Therefore, in this case more than ever, there is required by all a firm intellectual coherence: if we ought to believe and hold as true the words of the Holy Father about His own renunciation, we ought, on the other hand and equally, believe and hold as true the just mentioned words pronounced by Benedict XVI, which affirm that he remains still and always pope!
In conclusion, how can one explain, then, such an apparent and present unresolved situation in the Church … what, in substance, ought we hold to have clear ideas and not to let ourselves be overwhelmed, even us, by such a contemporary “confusion”?

The solution is supplied us both by the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, but as something requiring of us the highest attention and correct discernment ….

It is Our Lady Herself, in fact, who asks us to pay attention to Her words, left in our own days at Fatima, in which She speaks, both of the Holy Father, and of a Bishop dressed in white.

This is an authorized translation of the original at

MARCOTOSATTI.COM

News

Skojec & Delinis troll Tosatti with vile insults

February 16, 2020 Editor 12 Comments

by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

The moral and intellectual depravity of those who say that Bergoglio is certainly the pope, just sunk to a new low today, with their vile public contumely hurled at one of the most eminent and respected Vaticanista in Italy: Marco Tosatti. His “crime” is that he quoted an anonymous source at the Vatican saying that Benedict regards himself as the Pope and most of the Roman Curia know this.

https://twitter.com/SteveSkojec/status/1228736578626834432

https://twitter.com/jamesdcos/status/1228757689288855558

Then Denlinis goes for the juggler and says Pope Benedict XVI has lost his mind:

https://twitter.com/jamesdcos/status/1228768182619512836

Skojec then doubles down in the vile insult:

https://twitter.com/SteveSkojec/status/1228773035886309376

Then Denlinis calls Tosatti a liar too:

https://twitter.com/jamesdcos/status/1228790370722631680

I think you can see who here is honest and who has embraced Hell.

My question is, why do you love Bergoglio and his agenda so much, that you would resort to public contumely of such a honorable man?

POSTSCRIPT:

Some people are reading the title of this post as if the the ablative of means (with insults) were the verb (troll):

https://twitter.com/SteveSkojec/status/1229137969824485376

So if they do not even know English grammar, what value could their opinion be about a Latin Declaratio and the text of the Code of Canon Law? Steve and company need to get out of the victim-hood complex and recognize that they are the victimizers. Serial calumniators of all who ask them to be rational. It is beyond juvenile. And it is likely to stoke a complaint to the IRS about One Peter Five, for private inurement, because its public tax filings over several years raise serious questions.

+ + +

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Guest Editorials, News

Viganò reveals the friendship between Maciel and Cardinal Sandri, who will oversee the next Conclave

January 31, 2020 Editor 3 Comments

by Marco Tosatti

Authorized English Translation by FromRome.Info

READ THE ORIGINAL IN ITALIAN AT MARCOTOSATTI.COM

Dear Friends and Enemies of Stilum Curiae, we offer you today an extremely interesting document from the ex-Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, regarding one of the recent nominations by the Bridge-Builder: that of Cardinal Leonardo Sandi, as Vice Deacon of the College of Cardinals. It will be Leonardo Sandri, who at 76 years of age, who will oversee in reality the functions of the Dean of the Conclave, Giovanni Battista Re, who being 85 years of age cannot participate. It is a nomination which has stunned us, seeing that Leonardo Sandri was the Sostituo to the Secretary of State (then, Cardinal Sodano) when there was published the unsigned “note” in which it was affirmed there was no ongoing investigation against Marcial Maciel, the diabolic founder of the Legionaires of Christ. Moreover, the good will of the reigning Pontiff towards Sandri is extraordinary. He has already completed two tours of duty of 5 years each, since 20o7, as Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental churches (and is in the middle of a third) and has completed 76 years, when 75 is already the limit imposed for heads of the Dicasteries and for Bishops. But let us read what Archbishop Viganò has written:

§§§

The Faithful have the right to know

We have just been witnesses to one of the most indecent episodes where we have looked upon the work of the prince of lies intent upon falsifying the book of Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Robert Sarah, by covering them with ignoble insults and vulgar insinuations, by means of the actions of the papal prison guard, who is now serving as a hit-man. And now again we find him to be involved in another masterpiece of trickery: the confirmation on the part of the Bridge-Builder in the election of Cardinal Bishops and of the new Dean and Vice-Dean of the College of Cardinals. These acts have passed unobserved, while they conceal a subtle strategy. It is necessary to keep in mind, indeed, that in June of 2019, Papa Francesco increased the number of Cardinal Bishops, which had remained unchanged for centuries, by promoting 4 new ones at a single stroke. In this manner he insured for himself a majority favorable to himself, a thing which he has always done with new members of the College of Cardinals.

To Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, named Dean at the age of 86, but excluded form the next Conclave, I wish a longer life than his father. But his nomination is a cover for the more decisive one – that of Cardinal Sandri – who is now positioned to steer the next Conclave secundum Franciscum, that is, according to the updated and augmented version of the Mafia of St. Gall.

With Cardinal Leonardo Sandri I am bound by a long friendship, which had its beginning in the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, and then throughout 11 years in the same office as secretary to the Sostituto of the Secretary of State, and then 7 years of collaboration, from when he returned from a mandate as Nuncio to Mexico, after only 6 months, and was named the Sostotuto.

Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas — This maxim, attributed to Aristotle, and then taken up by Plato in regard to Socrates, and successively by Cicero, is explained in this way by Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Sententia libri Ethicorum, Book 1, Lesson 6, nn. 4-5:

Quod autem oporteat veritatem praeferre amicis, ostendit hac ratione. Quia ei qui est magis amicus, magis est deferendum. Cum autem amicitiam habeamus ad ambo, scilicet ad veritatem et ad hominem, magis debemus veritatem amare quam hominem, quia hominem praecipue debemus amare propter veritatem et propter virtutem… Veritas autem est amicus superexcellens cui debetur reverentia honoris; est etiam veritas quiddam divinum, in Deo enim primo et principaliter invenitur. Et ideo concludit, quod sanctum est praehonorare veritatem hominibus amicis.

In my own translation, it goes like this:

Then, that it be necessary to prefer truth to friends, is demonstrated with this reckoning. To him to whom one is more a friend there goes greater honor. Being friends of both, that is, of truth and of neighbor, we ought to love more the truth than our neighbor, because we ought to love the neighbor above all according to truth and virtue. Truth, indeed, is the most excellent friend to which one owes the reverence of honor. Truth is something of the divine, it finds itself in the first seat, and in its first principle in God. From which one must conclude, that it is something holy to prefer the honor of truth to friends.

Moreover, what constrains me to write about Cardinal Leonardo Sandri is inspired solely by the friendship which binds me to him for nearly 50 years, for the good of his soul, for the love of the Truth which is Christ Himself and for the Church His Bride, whom we have served together.

In the first audience which Francis conceded to me after that which I already mentioned on June 23, 2013, in which he asked me about Cardinal McCarrick, he asked me a similar question: “What is Cardinal Sandri like?” Struck with surprise by that question in regard to my dear friend, I did not reply out of embarrassment. Francis, then, opened his hands and moved them up and down like scales — as if to say: “Which one is heavier?” — and he looked me straight in the eyes to see if I agreed. In reply, I moved to confide in him: “Holy Father, I do not know if you know that the Nuncio Justo Mullor, President of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, was removed from the Apostolic Nunciature in Mexico because he opposed the directives coming from the Secretary of State aimed at covering for the grave accusations against Marcial Maciel”. I said this to the pope, so that he might reckon it for an eventual remedy to the injustice which Mons. Mullor suffered for not joining in the compromise, for remaining faithful to the truth and for his love of the Church. And this is the truth, which we reaffirm to the honor of this faithful servant of the Holy See, on the tomb of which I celebrated a Holy Mass in suffrage, in the Cathedral of Almeria, Spain.

I have already written in my first testimonial that the principal responsible for covering the misdeeds committed by Maciel was the then Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the recent acceptance of whose own resignation as Dean of the College of Cardinals was tied to his being implicated in the affair with Maciel. He, in addition to having protected Maciel, was certainly not outside of the loop in regard to the promotion of McCarrick … In the mean time, it is just that it be known that Cardinal Francis Arinze duly opposed himself, inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to the attempt by Sodano to coverup the case of Maciel.

Unfortunately for him, even Sandri let himself be involved by Sodano in this coverup operation for the horrible misdeeds of Maciel. To replace Mons. Mullor in Mexico City, it was necessary to name someone securely loyal to Sodano. Sandri had already given proof as Assessor of the Secretary of Sate. And so, the Nuncio in Venezuela, who was only there for 2 years, was transferred to Mexico. Of these shady maneuvers, which the ones in charge qualified as normal events, I was a direct witness in a conversation held by them on January 25, 2000, the Feast of Saint Paul, while we were on our way to the Basilica which bears the Saint’s name, for the closure of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The connection of these dates for the transfers is also significant: June 19, 2000, the transfer to Moscow of Mons. Giorgio Zur, after being President of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy for only 1 year; February 11, 2000, the nomination of Mons. Justo Mullor as President of the same Academy, after having been only 2 and a half years in Mexico; March 1, 2000, the transfer to Mexico of Mons. Sandri after only 2 and a half years spent in Venezuela. Only six months after this, on Sept 16, 2000, Sandri was promoted to the position of Sostituto of the Secretary of State, as the right hand man of Sodano.

The Legionaires of Christ did not omit to show Sandri their thanks. In the occasion of a pranzo held in the Paul VI Hall in honor of the Cardinals created in the consistory of Nov. 24, 2007, among whom was Sandri himself, we were left shocked when he cut in front of me as I stood in line to speak with Pope Benedict, as the Pope was making his entrance, saying: “Holy Father, excuse me, but I cannot stay for Pranzo, as I am the invited guest of 500 Legionaries of Christ.”

Look how Francis, after having repeatedly and obsessively indicated as the cause of sexual abuse a very vaguely defined “clericalism”, to avoid in this way denouncing the plague of homosexuality, has himself exhibited the worst kind of clericalism, which he has accused others of: to promote Sandri, the Cardinal-Priest in May 2018 to being Cardinal-Bishop only one month later, so that he might be able to name him as Vice-Dean of the College of Cardinals, as the candidate chosen beforehand by Francis to preside over the next Conclave.

The Faithful have the right to know of these sordid intrigues in a corrupt court. In the heart of the Church, it seems to us, there has invaded the shadow of the synagogue of Satan (Apocalypse 2:9).

+ Carlo Maria Viganò

Arciv. tit. di Ulpiana

Nunzio Apostolico

This is an authorized English translation of the Italian Original

from MARCOTOSATTI.COM

Interviews

Marco Tosatti speaks with FromRome.Info

January 29, 2020 Editor 5 Comments

An Interview with Marco Tosatti, one of the leading Vaticanista of Italy, who has covered the Vatican for nearly 40 years. He explains his career, how it has changed, what the Crisis of Bergoglio is doing to Catholics and Clergy and what they in turn are revealing to him.

Many thanks to Marco Tosatti for consenting to be interviewed
by Br. Alexis Bugnolo, of FromRome.Info

First, let me thank you, Mr. Tosatti, for granting me the opportunity to interview you. I consider it a great favor. — First of all, since there is so little biographical information about you, available in English, I would ask you to relate for my readers something about yourself, your professional career as a Vaticanista, and what you saw as your more memorable moments of the life of the Church in the last nearly 40 years.

I was born into a family of journalists. My father was a journalist, and I was a year and a half old when he passed away, in a tragedy which is well known in Italy (Editor’s Note: The Superga Plane crash of May 4, 1949). He was on the plane with the Grande Torino Soccer Team, on a return trip from an exposition match with the team from Lisbon. My older brother, Giorgio, was one of the most noted sports journalists of Italy. I myself never thought of doing anything else but being a journalist: I was taught from my youth that it was a needed and noble profession.

Before I covered religious news, I worked more than 10 years in other sectors: daily news — I was the first journalist on the scene of where the cadaver of Aldo Moro was dumped, having arrived together with the Police), labor news, political news, and news regarding public education. I only became a vaticanista by chance, when my predecessor retired: I was far from the Church at that time, and for the many years of my life I have been a vaticanista.

I myself can remember as a child, a communion rail, receiving the Sacrament on the tongue, and priests who always dressed as priests. A great deal, however, has changed in the Church since then. For yourself, on the other hand, I read that it was your work as a Vaticanista which was the occasion of your conversion to the Faith. Can you share with my readers how that came about, if this is not too personal of a question?

I believe that it was a gradual process for me; and I also believe that John Paul II had a great role in this. I was struck by how a person who was so extraordinarily intelligent prayed, with the abandonment of a child. It presented me with a problem, which in Zen Buddhism could be called a Koan: to be incredibly intelligent and have total faith in something which the mind cannot reach. So I began to pray myself.

Back when you began your career as a Vaticanista, there was no internet, and anything the world knew about the Vatican or the Pope was something you heard of only in Church publications for the most part, there was so little interest in particularly Catholic news. How did the job of reporting about the Vatican for a secular newspaper change during the many years of your career? Was there always the same interest in the same kind of news, or did the interest of your editors and your readers change also with the passing of time?

I began in December, 1981, and it was just then that occurred the downfall of Jaruzelski in Poland. There was a lot of interest in the story, but it was always or nearly always only of a political nature. The Vatican was very different back then. I joke: Vaticanisti were compared with journalists from Moscow, because the closure to the world of Mass Media was similar in both capitals … then, everything changed, as wee have seen: the prelates began to speak, give interviews and thus it went. With John Paul II it was certainly easy to get a story; also because Joaquin Navarro Walls was outstanding in finding news stories to feature. Nevertheless, I would say, as is today, it was mostly superficial news. But I believe that such is inevitable, in the genre of Mass Media.

Much of what is happening in the Church right now is profoundly shocking Catholics on a daily basis. We are finding it difficult to understand what is going on, and so there is, on the one hand, a very avid interest for news, and on another, after nearly 7 years of scandals, a strong desire that the bad news itself just go away. What have you noticed about how the faithful are reacting to the news of the Bergoglian regime and how their interest in it has changed in these last 7 years?

From the time when Social Media took on the role which it has today, it is much simpler for journalists to understand what the public wants. At my blog, Stilum Curiae, I do a lot of interaction with my readers. I am present on Twitter, have two profiles and a page on Facebook, have a channel on Telegram and on VK. What I perceive in regard to the latter, is the problem many Catholics have, to confront ambiguous, contradictory messages which clearly break with the doctrine and praxis of the Church as they have known and lived it up until a few years ago. Persons who were timid five or six years ago, in their protest against what is going on in the Church have become more and more explicit and are protesting openly. I am sure that for their part, they are much more interested in the real content of the message than in the images of propaganda they find on social media.

For anyone who has studied how the Communists have taken down governments and overthrown entire societies from within, the events of the last 7 years in the Church are deeply troubling. The growing consensus is that Marxism has replaced Catholicism, and that the great world powers along with George Soros are behind this coup d’etat. Do you sense from your contacts among the clergy here in Italy a similar growing awareness of the root of the problem?

Not a few persons, priests and no, they are more and more convinced that the Church of the ages is undergoing an unrelenting attack on the part of anti-Christian ideological, political and financial forces; a battle which has not let down in recent centuries, and which probably is now aiming directly at the internals of the Church. Certainly, this kind of problem did not seem to exist, when I began to serve as a vaticanista; and it grew to extreme proportions from the moment in which Benedict XVI renounced.

The resignation of Pope Benedict was for believing Catholics a true occasion of psychological shock. Even one European Bishop said, upon hearing the news, that he thought it was a Mardis Gras day joke. On that account, it is not surprising that Catholics have made the events of February 2013 the subject of intense discussions and investigations. — Since you are a professional Vaticanista, I ask if you can relate both personally and professionally how you reacted to the events of Feb. 11, 2013 and what followed up to Feb. 28 of that month.

I was taken by surprise. Even now I do not have a clear and unequivocal answer for that deed. And, according to me, it should never have been done. And the actual situation in the Church, the confusion, the divisions and all of that in which we are living, had its origin precisely in that deed. But I do not, yet, know how to explain to myself and to others what Benedict XVI did. I hope that when — many years from now — Benedict XVI leaves us, some elements of clarity are able to emerge. At the moment, I am not excluding any hypothesis.

From what you know and whom you know among the clergy and workers at the Vatican, what can you reveal about the discontent there? An eminent Vaticanista, whom I quoted anonymously last week, said opposition to Bergoglio is already at 100%. But I wonder what kind of opposition it is or could be, if no one is willing to go on record with public questions as to the legitimacy or orthodoxy of what is going on.

There is no doubt, that inside the Vatican, there reigns great fear and uncertainty. And it is from that, there comes to my ears how insufferable this regime is, its stunts, its ambiguities and the confusion it is creating is very great. It was not by chance that during the Amazon Synod even Cardinals and prelates close to Bergoglio took a position in the small circles against the suggestion of ordaining viri probati (Editor’s note: married laymen). But, as Manzoni used to say, if one does not have courage, he cannot inspire it . . . Luckily there are some Cardinals and Bishops who do not fear to speak.

As you may know, FromRome.Info is the only news site for the PPBXVI Movement: what I call those Catholics who accepting the terms and obligations of Canon Law, hold that Pope Benedict XVI is still the pope because his resignation was not in conformity with the requirements of Canon 332 §2 and that the response of the Cardinals to it violated both Canons 40 and 41. I heard from a lot of my sources that there are great numbers of Canonists and Clergy who also have grave doubts as to the validity of the renunciation or believe there should be an investigation. What are you hearing from your sources about these matters and this controversy?

I admit that I do not know much about this; I never studied Law nor Canon Law. What I can say is this. Even Cardinals contrary to Bergoglio, and who probably did not vote for him in the Conclave, admit that, alas, his election is legitimate. Second: the problem with Benedict XVI, whether he renounced legitimately or not, is that he has renounced being pope, and does not want to do the job. If we have a possible “claimant” who is not claiming, rather, who does not want to make a claim on the position, what can we do about it?

The crisis of having a man whom you think is the pope be a man whom you recognize is a raving heretic and Marxist, is a crisis which is shaking to the core those Catholics who are not members of the PPBXVI movement, as I have defined it. Many have left the Catholic Church, many more have left the practice of their faith. Many are holding on to the hope that Bergoglio is going to have a change of heart or that the Cardinals will do something about him. But the years pass and nothing is done. If anything the Cardinals declare themselves for the regime after the manner of TV testimonies of the Soviet or Maoist era. According to what you are hearing, how are Italian Catholic responding psychologically and intellectually to this seeming contradiction between what a pope should be and what the man they hold to be the pope is not.

The uneasiness is there, no doubt. Some people close their eyes and say: right or wrong, my pope. Others look and see; and think that the Church has certainly seen popes of all kinds in its long history, and whether it be true what we have been told: non praevalebunt. We must suffer it and pray

Finally, I express my surprise that you have consented to this interview. I surmised that just a few years ago you would not even want to talk with someone who considered Benedict the true Pope and Bergoglio an Anti-pope. Was your decision based on recent events, such as the slapping or the book controversy, or have you personally decided that the gravity of the present situation in the Church requires you as a Vaticanista to start considering all possibilities?

No, why not? I’m always willing to talk to anyone who wants to. We may have, we probably do, different ideas on some points about the situation, but that doesn’t prevent anything. What has changed is my position. If a few years ago you could have placed me among the “center moderates”, now I find myself among the opponents of this Church government. But the problem is that I remained what I was: it’s not me who moved…

Thank you, Mr. Tosatti, for granting me this interview, and for the permissions to republish in English some of your posts at MarcoTostatti.com. I am sure the readers of FromRome.Info are also grateful. Praised be Jesus Christ!

This interview was conducted by email in both English and Italian. FromRome.Info publishes here its English translation of Tosatti’s responses.

Marco Tosatti publishes his writings and reflections at MarcoTosatti.com

The republication of this Interview is forbidden
without express permission of the publisher,
who however grants permission for citation of an individual response with a link to the original whole, here at FromRome.Info, for those sites
which want to publicize it

POSTSCRIPT: A pope is pope, not because he claims to be pope or because others claim he is pope, but because he accepted his valid election as the pope and has not yet renounced the petrine munus according to the norm of Canon 332 §2. This concept of being is something unique to those holding offices in Christ’s Church on account of their supernatural origin in the Divine Will, Which has promised to bind Itself to the decrees of the Successors of Saint Peter in Canon Law, and without the consent of Which no office in the Church is validly conferred. It is on this basis, the basis of Canon Law, that the Catholic Faithful alone have the duty to obey those who hold office in the Church, for otherwise, obedience would be divorced from Faith, and the hierarchical structure of the visible Church would be in schism with the theological virtue and its obligations, and the institutions of the Church would not be approved of by the Divine Will, which all Christians must obey and prefer to the will of mortal men.

Guest Editorials

Marco Tosatti — Harvard & the Church: Lower the quality to guarantee failure

January 19, 2020 Editor 3 Comments

by Marco Tosatti

Authorized English translation by FromRome.Info

PG, HARVARD, LA CHIESA: ABBASSARE LA QUALITÀ FA FALLIRE….

January 19, 2020

Dear Friends of Stilum curiali, Mr. Big Shot went to Mass, and has returned. Imagine him with ears still ringing … he eats a quick light lunch, and sets to writing. Thus, he sends us this commentary, hot and spicy like an American hot-dog (you will understand the reference, shortly) … Have a good read and ponder what he is saying:

§§§

In his homily this morning at Mass, the priest gave a long description of the divisions which exist among religions (which according to him have the same god), among monotheistic religions (even worse), among Christians (worst of all) and finally among Catholics, where there are sects of Traditionalists which oppose the Roman Pontiff (the unforgivable sin).

Finally, he concluded, that we ought to understand and act accordingly. Not by converting, but by going forth, listening, understanding and opening up to others.

And so, I propose to you a simile, which I hope is able to make you understand, appreciate and put what he says into practice.

At Harvard University, they tell this tale to first year students studying for a M.B.A., to not act like know-it-alls as soon as they master the concept of strategic business planning.

So that they wake up to the fact that by erring in a strategic diagnosis and acting on that basis, they can provoke exactly the mistakes which they intended to avoid in the decision making process.

The lesson (spoiler alert!) for us Catholics is that, in erring about the moral diagnosis of how the world imagines itself to have evolved thanks to science and technology; in thinking that we should, therefore, relativize our own Faith so that it is no longer contradicted by the world or discords with other beliefs: we risk well not only to lose the Faith itself, but also to become worthless for anything, and not even serve a purpose for our fellow man.

With a greater risk, in consequence, of being despised even more by other religions which are presently conquering us. The tale to be reflected upon is this (I will give the shortest possible version):

We are back in the U.S.A. in the Fifties, and a smart European immigrant, with a great sense of entrepreneurship, having understood how to satisfy those in need of a lunch on Wall Street, starts a food service (on a moveable cart) which sells hot dogs.

He furnishes himself with the best quality products (sausage, bread and mustard), sets a more than adequate price and is courteous and kind to his clientel.

After about ten years he is the undisputed leader on Wall Street, with the longest lines of customers (though served quickly) at his already numerous food carts in the quarter.

One of his employes, who argued with him (over pay) begins a rival business to compete with him, but at low cost.

Another 10 years pass by, and our businessman has sent his own son to Harvard with the intention of developing a plan to grow the business and go public on the Stock Exchange (notwithstanding his low cost competitor).

His son having graduated from Harvard, the father asks him to make a strategic analysis and formulate a strategic plan for the family business, including how to deal with competitors and assure a future success. His son, six months later, calls his father and explains to him that their business will be unsustainable in the future, destined to failure. Wall Street has grown and changed. Their traditional clientele, according to the son’s diagnosis (mistaken), will have less money to spend, have lower expectations, and are presently receiving a quality way above the price they are paying. And not only that. The first low-cost competitor will continue to maintain his market share and will grow it into other lines by offering products which are increasingly edgy in quality. Other competitors, even at a lower cost will appear on every street corner.

According to the son, now is the time to change the business model and to adapt to the market, instead of leading it: lower quality ingredients and products, less service and hence lower prices, more competitive with competitors.

Having heeded his son’s advice, the conclusion becomes obvious six months later: the father is forced to close the business. And the son has the last word: “Dad, I told you that this business was unsustainable…”

I hope I have illustrated by this simile what will happen to our Church, which already endured the competition of the Protestant Reformation and yet never understood the challenges of the modern world, by adapting Herself instead of taking a leadership position by teaching that Catholic morality is the best, the truest and the one which is valid and indispensable in every time and circumstance. To adapt Herself to the supposed pretensions of the world means to admit that She is unable to form man to live in the world without becoming attached to the world; that She has not been able to convert him. But the present reality is only the consequence of bad doctrine and false teaching. To recognize that all the religions of the world are equal, means that one has not only lost the Faith and wants to lose mankind, but also that he wants broker at a discount with belief in a god of relativism, with beliefs without God, and with superstitions. This is why the present world, disillusioned with a Church which is thinking like this, looks with hope to a Ratzinger, who has woken from slumber, in his declaration of Faith with Cardinal Sarah, and in Viganò’s denunciations of corruption. And is exulting in them.

(This is an authorized English translation of)

PG, HARVARD, LA CHIESA: ABBASSARE LA QUALITÀ FA FALLIRE….

Guest Editorials

Marco Tosatti — The Book on Celibacy: Shall Parolin Open an Inquest?

January 18, 2020 Editor 2 Comments

MARCOTOSATTI.COM

by Marco Tosatti

January 18, 2020

Authorized English translation by Giuseppe Pellegrino

Dear readers of Stilum Curiae,

After the visit [on Friday evening, January 17] of Cardinal Robert Sarah to Benedict XVI, and his declarations [on Twitter], the same “Monsignor X” who wrote us a few days ago has offered us another intervention. He appears justly indignant at what is happening in the Vatican, and in particular among the journalists of the Vatican court. And he makes an interesting proposal….

§§§

En raison des polémiques incessantes, nauséabondes et mensongères qui ne se sont jamais arrêtées depuis le début de la semaine, concernant le livre Des profondeurs de nos cœurs, j’ai rencontré ce soir le Pape Émérite Benoît XVI. (1) +RS
— Cardinal R. Sarah (@Card_R_Sarah) January 17, 2020

“Because of the incessant, nauseating, and untrue controversies that have never stopped since the beginning of the week concerning the book “From The Depths of Our Hearts,” this evening [Friday, January 17, 2020] I met with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. +RS. With Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, we have been able to certify that there is no misunderstanding between us. I left very happy, full of peace and courage from this beautiful audience. +RS”

Friends of Stilum Curiae,

who was responsible for the this attempt to harm Cardinal Sarah and Benedict XVI? I pray you take note of the expression used by Cardinal Sarah to connote the facts:

“Incessant, nauseating and untrue.”

I realize that it will be a waste of time, as was true with the Dubia and the Correctio Filialis, but do we want to call for an investigation?

Shall we ask Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin to create an Investigative Commission that will shed light on an affair that has sought to defame the reputation of the Pope Emeritus and a most eminent Cardinal?

The expression of Sarah – “nauseating” – struck me. Something nauseating – that is, which provokes nausea and generates a sense of repulsion, disgust, and contempt – is attributed to an immoral person, who therefore arouses a feeling of repulsion.

Since we know how much Cardinal Sarah weighs his words, it is now indispensable to identify this immoral person who is going around in the Vatican, in the Catholic Church.

It will not be easy to find this exact “specific” immoral person, given the number and variety of immoral people who are behind the Sacred Walls of the Vatican, disguised as priests or as expert journalists of communications services, rather than experts in theology or liturgy.

But someone who has experience in such investigations ought to be able to identify him. They could entrust the oversight of this Investigative Commission to Cardinal Herranz, the former president of the Herranz Commission, which was convened by Benedict XVI to shed light on Vatileaks I, which in 2012 discovered intricacies and conspiracies, identified names and reported them secretly to Pope Benedict XVI, a few days prior to February 11, 2013. Then the Pope resigned.

And it was Don Georg Gänswein, first and personally, who hurried – surprisingly – to explain that the resignation was a decision that had been made by Pope Benedict for at least a year!!

I propose a hypothesis: that what has just happened in the matter of the Sarah – Benedict book is connected by an umbilical cord to what happened in 2012.

In short: Benedict XVI had to definitively disappear from history – and the same is true today. Because Benedict XVI was restoring the Church of Christ, which was instead destroyed, and continues to be destroyed.

Signed,

Monsignor X

See the Original at MARCOTOSATTI.COM

IL LIBRO SUL CELIBATO. PROPOSTA A PAROLIN: APRA UN’INDAGINE.

Guest Editorials

Marco Tosatti: Who is Gänswein Really? What Role Has He Played And Is He Playing?

January 16, 2020 Editor 4 Comments

By Marco Tosatti

15 January 2020

Authorized English translation of Italian Original by Giuseppe Pellegrino

Dear readers, we have received a message from an elderly high-ranking prelate of the Curia; he is retired, but because he has over forty years of experience working inside the Vatican walls, from time to time he is still given delicate assignments. What “Monsignor X” writes to us is extremely interesting, because it helps us to piece together some of the problematic aspects of the events of the last 72 hours. We are speaking, naturally, of the saga of the book; and we must say that it is difficult to not consider someone to be the co-author of a book that they have written more than forty pages of, as well as collaborating in writing the introduction and conclusion. Difficult…and a bit ridiculous.

But, remaining focused on the theme of the personal secretary of the Pope Emeritus, we advise you to read La Verità on Thursday morning [January 16], which will contain another testimony of great value from an archbishop who has held many important roles in the Curia and also outside the Vatican and who has been in contact with Msgr. Gänswein for a long time. Trust my advice…

Monsignor X to Tosatti:

I ask you to print what I write here, with the intention of making a contribution in order to help ensure that there will not be muddling of either the figure of Benedict nor that of Sarah, who is more in danger in this whole affair.

What has been reported raises several questions:

Why would a man like Sarah ever have done something so absurd and easily disproven? (It is unthinkable that this was a private and free initiative of Gänswein – he does not have the authority even to think about doing it, and it would be far too dangerous to actually do it).
Who therefore asked Gänswein to give orders to Cardinal Sarah? Was it Benedict or Bergoglio? (These are Gänswein’s two superiors)

I think it is clear that it could not have been Benedict, who speaks with Sarah frequently and loves him as a brother.

But who is Gänswein? Georg Gänswein is a very intelligent man; he was the most faithful personal secretary for Benedict from the moment of his election as pope, replacing Msgr. Clemens, the former personal secretary of Cardinal Ratzinger, who remained the pope’s confidant, stirring up Gänswein’s jealousy, to the point of ending up literally getting punched for it!

My understanding is that during the period of the pontificate, Gänswein functioned as the loyal protector of the Pope and even operated as a sort of “alternative” Secretary of State, in opposition to Cardinal Bertone, with whom Benedict had bad relations.

After the resignation he was not, as people called him, “the caregiver” of Benedict XVI.

I fear that he was rather “the guardian.”

Having been a most faithful and most loyal secretary, something happened that caused a profound transformation in him.

Therefore it is not surprising that it is supposed and said that Gänswein had not been told by Benedict about this book with Sarah. Is it possible that Gänswein no longer enjoys the confidence of the Pope Emeritus?

It could also be the case, after the mysterious and never-clarified arrest of the papal butler Paolo Gabriele, accused of having photocopied private documents of Pope Benedict taken straight off of Gänswein’s desk and giving them to journalists, without “anyone” knowing…

These documents accused Cardinal Bertone, with whom Gänswein, previously, had bad relations; but which curiously improved afterwards…

But above all it is curious that Pope Bergoglio confirmed him not only as personal secretary of the Pope Emeritus but also as Prefect of the Papal Household, which is not an honorary position.

The abrupt order given [on Monday] to Cardinal Sarah to remove Ratzinger’s signature from the book – which was not given explicitly in Benedict’s name, as should have been done – may reignite various suspicions and doubts about the figure and loyalty of Gänswein.

Here is a description of the duties of the Prefect of the Papal Household, taken from the Vatican website:

It is the task of the Prefecture of the Papal Household to coordinate the services of the Antechamber and to organize the official audiences granted by His Holiness to Heads of State, Heads of Government, Governmental Ministers and other dignitaries, as well as to Ambassadors who come to the Vatican to present their Letters of Credence.

The Prefecture takes care of the preparations for all audiences – private, special and general – and visits from those who are formally received by the Holy Father. It is also responsible for arranging Pontifical ceremonies – except liturgical celebrations – as well as the Spiritual Retreat of the Holy Father, the College of Cardinals and the Roman Curia.

In addition, the Prefecture oversees the appropriate arrangements required each time the Holy Father leaves the Apostolic Palace to visit the city of Rome or travel within Italy.

(For the Italian Original, click the link below)

CHI È GAENSWEIN REALMENTE? QUALE RUOLO HA GIOCATO E GIOCA?

News

Marco Tosatti — Cardinal Sarah and Benedict XVI Book controversy

January 16, 2020 Editor 3 Comments

By Marco Tosatti

January 14, 2020

Authorized Translation by Giuseppe Pellegrino of the Original Italian

Published Dear readers, various people have asked me to try and shed light on the argument over the publication of the book “Des Profondeurs des nos coeurs” created by Benedict XVI and Cardinal Robert Sarah. Here we have brought together from extremely reliable sources a series of elements that we offer to you.

Apparently nobody in the Mater Ecclesiae monastery [where Benedict XVI lives] had seen the cover of the book, and this was one of the principal problems.

The central point however to clarify is the content of the polemic that the “Bergoglio Press Team” launched from the beginning: claiming that Benedict had not been involved in writing the book, that he only put his signature on it and other such miserable insinuations. The reality is that Benedict XVI edited all of the drafts of the book, obviously his own part, but also reading and editing the part written by Cardinal Robert Sarah.

Benedict also said, and wrote, to Sarah, that he approved both the introduction and the conclusion of the book.

George Gänswein has not read the book, and this has definitely caused a problem.

The entire operation remained in the hands of Benedict and Sarah, and also the editor Nicolas Diat, who obviously took a great interest in the job, seeing it as an occasion to make this book the “important” book of Benedict XVI and Sarah, all to his glory and merit.

Thus, when the bomb went off Monday morning [which had already begun to explode on Sunday night because in America they were awake], and people like Faggioli, etc. started shooting, with a very clear intention. The focused on the cover, which Diat had published, saying that here he wanted to make an “operation against the Pope,” that is, against Pope Francis.

The objective of Faggioli etc. was to have there be no discussion of the content of the book. On Monday morning at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery they did not realize the extent of the polemic that was taking place, despite having been warned. Gänswein finally got in touch with Andrea Tornielli, who wrote an article for L’Osservatore Romano and Vatican News, referring to the ideas of Pope Bergoglio on the importance of celibacy, and seeking to throw oil on the waters that various channels were agitating, claiming among other things that Benedict XVI and Sarah had not written the book together.

The latest development, which is frankly quite incomprehensible, has come to us from the declarations of Georg Gänswein, who told a German journalist that the title needs to be changed as well as the cover. For what reason, we don’t know. Perhaps in order to protect his own position, which is definitely a complicated one, as he is the person closest to Benedict and at the same time close to Bergoglio as the Prefect of the Papal Household. In passing, we can note that among the yelps and barkings of the pro-regime press in the first hours of this controversy they were speaking of a manipulation by the “entourage” of Pope Benedict. But actually, since Benedict’s “entourage” consists of Gänswein alone, it was in the dark about everything…. But the impression is that Gänswein is trying to avoid being crushed between a rock and hard place is strong; to the point of making people believe that if some sort of push was given to Benedict, well, it only happened now and not previously.

Undoubtedly Gänswein with his declarations today places Cardinal Sarah in a difficult situation that has nothing to do with him. Sarah has conducted himself in an extremely straightforward way. All of this work on the book, however, began before the Synod on the Amazon, in September.

In September, because of the pre-synodal polemics over priestly celibacy and the question of “viri probati,” Benedict had already written fifteen reflections on the theme of celibacy. These were then included in the book.

Note that the path taken seems very similar to what happened on the occasion of the summit on clergy sexual abuse [in February 2019]. Benedict had prepared a reflection, probably with the intention of offering it as a contribution to bishops directing the summit, sending it to the reigning Pontiff and the Secretary of State. But it remained there [and was never presented at the summit], and it was published a few months later in a German journal that focuses on the clergy.

Once again, it seems interesting and important to repeat: these paper polemics have moved all of our attention away from the contents of the book to its cover!

(For the Italian original click the link below)

IL LIBRO DI BENEDETTO XVI E SARAH. ECCO I RETROSCENA DEL GIALLO.

News, Team Bergoglio

Team Bergoglio member confirms in new book the conspiracy to elect Cardinal Bergoglio in violation of UDG 81

September 24, 2015 Editor 1 Comment

New entries are now required to our Chronology of Reports regarding Team Bergoglio:

September 24, 2015: Renowned Vaticanista, Edward Pentin, via his blog on NCR, publishes an article entitled, “Cardinal Danneels Admits to Being Part of a ‘Mafia’ Club opposed to Benedict XVI”, which reveals the decade long conspiracy, which was known as “the Club of St. Gallen“, to elect Bergoglio so as to radically change the Catholic Church. This is confirmation of the violation of UDG 81.

September 24, 2015: Renowned Vaticanista, Marco Tosatti confirms, via his blog, that in a new biography, Cardinal Danneels admits to being part of a “mafiaclub” working to get Bergoglio elected, years before 2013.

2013 Conclave, Chronology of Reports on "Team Bergoglio", News, Team Bergoglio

The Chronology of Reports on “Team Bergoglio”

December 2, 2014 Editor

Rome, Dec. 2, 2014: The revelations by Dr. Austen Ivereigh in his new book, The Great Reformer, have provoked response and comment throughout the world. Since, in such an important story it is useful to understand the chronology of the reporting, the From Rome Blog will attempt to cover, in this article, a short summary of events in the form of a timeline, for the utility of its readers and of journalists following the story. This timeline will be updated from time to time, until the magnitude becomes something too great for one blogger to follow.

Nov. 21, 2014: Dr. Austen Ivereigh presents his book to Pope Francis (Reported by Dr. Ivereigh’s Twitter feed: see screen shot here).

Nov. 22, 2014: John Bingham, reporter for the Telegraph, writes his report, Pope Francis: how cardinals’ Conclave lobbying campaign paved way for Argentine pontiff, which appears on the online edition at 8:15 PM London time. It is in this report that the allegations of Dr. Ivereigh, regarding vote canvassing are first made news. All the subsequent reports will react to this. (On Nov. 26, this article was published, with later information, in a Spanish translation by Secretum Meum Mihi Blog, here.)

Nov. 23, 2014: A report by John Bingham, entitled, “English Cardinal ‘lobbied for Pope’“, is published on p. 16 in the Sunday Telegraph, UK, regarding Dr. Ivereigh’s book and the allegations concerning the vote canvassing by Cardinals in days preceding the Conclave of 2013 (according to Maggie Doherty’s Letter to the Editor in the Daily Telegraph, Nov. 25). An image of page 16 of the Sunday Telegraph is subsequently published by a Spanish blog on Dec. 1 (here)

Nov. 23, 2014: Antony Bushfield of Premier Christian Radio writes, English Cardinal ‘led campaign’ to elect Pope Francis, and interviews Dr. Ivereigh about his book (9:36 minutes) and the allegations of canvassing. Dr. Ivereigh says of Cardinal Bergoglio, “accepts” out of humility to be Candidate; Ivereigh also confirms meeting on previous Friday with Pope. When questioned by Bushfield, Dr. Ivereigh affirms necessity of process to get elected as Pope, but doges question about nature of canvassing, with seemingly great worry about the words he is choosing.

Nov. 24, 2014: Libertà e Persona, publishes Lorenzo Bertocchi’s, La “squadra di Bergoglio”, which exposes the story for the first time in the Italian language. (This link discovered & added to chronology on Dec. 15).

Nov. 24, 2014: GloriaTV publishes in video format its News for Nov. 25, in which it details the revelations of Dr. Ivereigh’s book regarding “Team Bergoglio”. (added to Chronology on Dec. 17, 2014).

Nov. 25, 2014: Dr. Austen Ivereigh’s book, The Great Reformer: the Making of a Radical Pope is published in English in the USA/UK (according to Amazon.com) and Italian.

Nov. 25, 2014: In a Letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph, Maggie Doherty, the spokeswoman for Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor denies that Cardinal Bergoglio was approached by Cardinals or consented to the work of “Team Bergoglio”. (See here for an image of that letter).

Nov. 25, 2014: The From Rome blog reports the events known and speculated about the canonical implications of UDG 81, in “If Ivereigh is to be believed, was Bergoglio’s election invalid?“

Nov. 26, 2014: The From Rome blog adds an addendum concerning the implications of canon 171 to its previous report.

Nov. 27, 2014: The From Rome blog returns to the topic of “Team Bergoglio” in, Ivereigh + UDG 81 = A Radical Problem for the Pope, which discusses both the letter by Maggie Doherty and the canonical reasons why it appears that the election of Cardinal Bergoglio may now be open to a challenge. This article was republished in a rather good Italian translation by Chiesa e post Concilio, on Dec. 2.

Dec. 1, 2014: In the morning, Marco Tosatti, noted Vaticanista at La Stampa, reports the imbroglio on his blog, San Pietro e Dintorni, Il caso di “Team Bergoglio”. Tosatti is the first journalist to cite UDG 81, and gives a HT to the From Rome blog.

Dec. 1, 2014: In the late morning, the Italian news blog, Il Sismografo publishes, P. Lombardi su presunti comportamenti di alcuni cardinali nell’ultimo Conclave, the apparent transcript of a private communication by Fr. Frederico Lombardi, the Vatican Press Office spokesman, denying the allegations of Dr. Ivereigh. (Original here at a somewhat nondescript url, not the front page: our translation here). Fr. Lombardi’s denial names the four Cardinals.

Dec. 1, 2014: The blog, Rorate Caeli (here), and the Spanish news service EFE (here) report on Il Sismografo’s report and the preceding news. The former adds speculations regarding who were involved in convincing Pope Benedict XVI to resign and lamented the dearth of investigative reporting on that story. The From Rome blog, follows with its unofficial English translation, in Fr. Lombardi denies Ivereigh’s allegations.

Numerous news agencies then leaped on the report, mostly in the Spanish speaking world:

Europa Press: El Vaticano desmiente una estrategia entre cardinales en el ultimo conclave para elegir a Francesco

Periodista Digital: La Santa Sede niega la existencia de un acuerdo previo al conclave para la eleccion de Francisco (RD/Agencias)

El Papa en la prensa: El complot (que non era) de cuatro cardenales para elegir Papa al Cardenal Bergoglio (This report contains a image of page 16 of the Sunday Telegraph, cited above).

Radio Formula: Cardenales niegan campaña para elección papal de Bergoglio. This Report adds the names of 2 more Cardinals, Sean O’Malley (Boston) and Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, and reports the implications of UDG 81. (Notimex)

Ansa Brasil: Cardeais negam campanha por eleição de Francisco (Source: http://www.papafrancesconewsapp.com/por/)

Ansa Italia: Papa: Porpore negano accordi pre-Conclave (in the briefest of terms).

(This list is not exhaustive.)

Dec. 2, 2014: The From Rome blog publishes for the first time, The Chronology of Reports on “Team Bergoglio”

Dec 2, 2014: Marco Tosatti publishes on his blog, San Pietro e Dintorni, Team Bergoglio. Ivereigh Scrive., which the blog, From Rome notices on his twitter feed, just 2 minutes after the first publication of its Chronology report. Tosatti’s report cites Ivereigh’s clarification, notices that he has not denied anything, and adds corroborative information concerning Bergoglio recognition of the campaign and its effectiveness.

Dec. 2, 2014: Gloria TV News, in a video broadcast at 9 PM, covers the story of “Team Bergoglio” and reveals discrepancies in the denial given by Fr. Lombardi.

Dec. 3, 2014: Katholisches.info publishes a good summary of the controversy heretofore, entitled, Ivereigh + Universi dominici gregis 81 = Ein radikales Problem für den Papst, which, though it copies the title of our past report, contains in German, an original work by the editors of that site.

Dec. 4. 2014: The From Rome blog publishes, Vatican Radio seeks to kill story on “Team Bergoglio”, which outs Il Sismografo as a publication of Radio Vaticana staff and analyzes the attribution of “canvassing” to the story on “Team Bergoglio”, as well as other information as assists in the understanding of the motives behind the curious denials of Ivereigh’s testimony in The Great Reformer.

Dec. 4. 2014: Catholic News Agency publishes, Author, cardinals spar over reports of conclave campaigning: which cites Dr. Ivereigh’s substantial retractions of his original printed narrative in The Great Reformer

Dec. 5, 2014: The From Rome Blog publishes, Ivereigh backtracks to protect “Team Bergoglio” from penalties of UDG 81: which responds to the CNA article and draws out the conclusions.

Dec. 5, 2014: David Gibson of Religion News Service (NYC) publishes, Smoking gun? Pope Francis’ critics cite new book in questioning his papacy: which is a rather well written piece, except for 2 facts:

(1) that it seems to characterize this Blog as a critic of Pope Francis for simply speculating as to the motives of those official spokesman (Maggie Doherty of Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor & Fr. Frederico Lombardi, of the Pope) for issuing denials about what Dr. Ivereigh claimed in his book, The Great Reformer. Hey, folks, the author of the From Rome blog is simply being curious and attentive; is it now a crime against political correctness to publish one’s thoughts about the news?

(2) Gibson writes: “prompted some to question whether Bergoglio himself was involved by giving the go-ahead”, while linking to the From Rome blog. As far as the From Rome blog knows, it has never published speculation as to whether Cardinal Bergoglio was involved, it has speculated whether the reason for the denials is the consequences of UDG 81 regarding all who are involved, regardless of who was involved. Let’s us remember, folks, that it is Dr. Ivereigh who is or has made the allegations, this Blog is only reporting what has been alleged and speculating on the motives of those reacting to that allegation and of Dr. Ivereigh for changing his story.

Dec. 5, 2014: Kirche & Realität broadcasts in a German-language Video news of the “Team Bergoglio” affair.

Dec. 6, 2014: The From Rome blog publishes, Ivereigh knew of UDG 81 on March 12, 2014, which details evidence from a news report by the BBC, in video format, in which Dr. Austen Ivereigh and Msgr. Mark Langham participate, and concludes that it sufficiently shows the probity of Ivereigh’s claims in The Great Reformer. It also cites UDG 81 and canon 171 to show how this might lead to the invalidity of Cardinal Bergoglio’s election.

Dec. 6, 2014: The From Rome blog publishes, Cardinal Murphy-O’Conner admits Pope Francis recognized his leadership of “Team Bergoglio”, which cites a Sept. 12, 2013 Catholic Herald report by Miguel Cullen, in which the Cardinal guts 2 key points of his official Nov. 25th denial of Ivereigh’s narrative.

Dec. 7, 2014: The From Rome blog publishes its first editorial on the “Team Bergoglio” affair, entitling it: 4 Ways the “Team Bergoglio” Revelations undo Francis’ papacy, which draws out the ecclesiological implications of the affair and its handling; shows forensically that the two denials, heretofore given, are not credible, and suggests a plenary solution to the questions and doubts arising.

Dec. 7, 2014: Msgr. Kieran Harrington of NET TV interviews Dr. Austen Ivereigh regarding his book. Ivereigh answers in a very indirect manner, Msgr. Harrington concludes by affirming vote-canvassing is a criminalized act. Gibson of RNS participates and shows his bias to the reports on this scandal. (Thank you, Msgr., for your coverage!) — This video was uploaded to YouTube on Dec. 9th; according to Dr. Ivereigh’s Twitter feed, it was recorded on Dec. 2.

Dec. 8, 2014: The From Rome blog publishes, Public Questions for the Vatican that need to be Answered, which lists 4 questions asked of Mr. Greg Burke, Senior Communications officers at the Vatican Secretary of State, and awaits his response.

Dec. 9, 2o14: The From Rome blog publishes, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope: As many as 30 Cardinals implicated in Vote-Canvassing Scandal, which reviews the print-edition of the Book, and subjects Dr. Ivereigh’s testimony to a forensic analysis to determine who is being accused of what. This article was published in Italian translation by the Roman blog, Chiesa e post concilio, on Dec. 17, 2014.

Dec. 9, 2014: Joan Frawley Desmond, of the National Catholic Register publishes an written transcript of an interview with Dr. Austen Ivereigh entitled, Unraveling the ‘Francis Enigma’, which toward the end discusses the canvassing controversy. There, Dr. Ivereigh says wrongly, that it would be contrary to conclave rules for a Cardinal to cooperate in any manner with a campaign to urge his election (this is forbidden only if there is a pact or agreement to solicit votes by promises). He gives this as the motive for Team Bergoglio’s objections to his narrative and his motive for altering the statement in the E-book edition of his book.

Dec. 11, 2014: Church Militant TV briefly mentions the Team Bergoglio affair in their Top News Stories of the day.

Dec. 11, 2014: Raymond Arroyo at EWTN interviewed Dr. Austen Ivereigh about Team Bergoglio scandal at 36:40 during The World Over program, on video. This is not a permanent link, will be valid only for 7 days. In it, Ivereigh reaffirms the validity of his narrative in toto, only says that he was wrong to say that the Cardinals sought Bergoglio’s consent. In his book he says “assent” not “consent”, though, on p. 355.

Dec. 12, 2014: The From Rome blog publishes, The Monstrosity of the Allegations against “Team Bergoglio” = Cardinal Bergoglio is not the Pope, draws out the implications of what Dr. Ivereigh has alleged, by showing the consequences of the effects of Canons 1329 and 1331: that is, that the allegations imply that the Pope is not the Pope. (This article was translated into German by the Custos-Sancto blog, on Dec. 22., omitting the footnotes.)

Dec. 13, 2014: The From Rome blog publishes, The improbity of Team Bergoglio’s Recent Denials, which subjects the public statements of Maggie Doherty and Fr. Frederico Lombardi, made on behalf of the alleged members of Team Bergoglio, to a forensic analysis to determine their probity. Which analysis shows that little or nothing has in fact been denied, and implicitly much or all has been confirmed. All of which points to the affirmation by Team Bergoglio of Cardinal Bergoglio’s complicity.

Dec. 13, 2014: John Allen of Crux, an Internet Subsidiary of the Boston Globe (owned by Boston Red Sox owner), publishes, Deal with it: Francis is the Pope, in which Allen cites Dr. Ivereigh’s new position that nothing alleged happened nor is it signified by what he wrote; repeats error that all agreements before conclave are contravention of Universi Dominici Gregis, ignores that he said “votes” were “tallied”.

From Rome’s Comment on the Article: The article by Allen ostensibly could be understood as written principally for the purpose of rebutting the reports of the From Rome blog, but in it the author shows he has not read Dr. Ivereigh’s book, and Ivereigh forgets what he wrote. That both seem to take the new view, that words do not have a fixed meaning, but only that which political necessity of the moment dictates, is a sure sign that there is no way to defend against the assertions that the allegations as written have the enormous implications as have been detailed here at the From Rome blog.

Dec. 17, 2014: The From Rome blog, publishes, Cardinal Napier speaks about the “Team Bergoglio” scandal: in which the Twitter conversation between Mr. Paul Priest and his Eminence is published for the sake of those not having a Twitter account; in the course of which it appears that the Cardinal has a different sense of what constitutes sufficient forensic evidence, and a non-familiarity with UDG n. 5. (This article was translated immediately into Italian by the Info-Catholice Blog; it was republished in a Polish translation the next day.

Dec. 17, 2014: Novus Ordo Watch, one of the leading news sites for Sedevacantists (who hold that one or more or all of the Popes since Pius XII are not pope, on account of heresy or invalidity of election), covers the “Team Bergoglio” scandal in their daily news wire and then a separate post. The news-wire story was then immediately translated into Spanish.

Dec. 17, 2014: Chiesa e post Concilio, a blog in the city of Rome, publishes in Italian translation our article on Dr. Ivereigh’s book: Il Grande Riformatore e la creazione di un Papa radicale (translation by Antonio Marcantonio).

Dec. 20, 2014: The From Rome Blog publishes its editorial, No, your Eminence, the Church is not a Tyranny!, which speaks to the gravity of underestimating the implications of Dr. Austen Ivereigh’s scandalous allegations regarding “Team Bergoglio” and the 2013 Conclave, on account of the nature of the Church’s mission.

Dec. 21, 2014: Radio Spada publishes Guido Ferro Canale’s, Nullità dell’elezione pontifica per accordo previo?, which attempts to show that a hypothetical violation of UDG 81 would not, nor could not, render a papal election itself suspect. The author’s rambling argument neglects several important articles already published which speak of the effects of canons 1329, 1331 and 171, though he omits previous objections made by Bergoglio supporters. He also seemingly is unaware of the contents or meaning of the English words found in the text the ninth chapter of Dr. Ivereigh’s book, such as “canvassing”, “campaigning”, and “tallying”.

Dec. 21, 2014: The From Rome Blog publishes, 2 American Prelates endorses narrative in “Team Bergoglio” scandal, which cites Cardinal Dolan’s and Archbishop Chaput’s endorsement of Dr. Ivereigh’s book, The Great Reformer, as found on the back dust-jacket of the American edition. Others endorsing the book are: John L. Allen, Jr., associate editor of the website, Crux, and journalist for the Boston Globe; George Weigel; Fr. Thomas Reese, S. J.; Fr. Thomas Roscica, C. S. B.; and David Gibson, reporter for Religion News Service (RNS). The From Rome Blog also notes therein, that Amazon.com USA is no longer selling the book on account of some stocking problem.

Dec. 21, 2014: Antonio Socci, the famous Italian journalist, and author, comments in an editorial published in the Italian newspaper, Libero (reprinted the next day at their blog, and the same day at his blog, Lo Straniero) on the Team Bergoglio Scandal. The From Rome blog publishes an unofficial English translation of the first part of that article, here. Socci is of the opinion that the validity of the Conclave is not jeopardized thereby, but does not give his reasons.

Dec. 22, 2014: The From Rome blog publishes, Antontio Socci speaks about the “Team Bergoglio” scandal, which is an unofficial translation of part of Socci’s blog post from the previous day.

Dec. 25, 2014: The From Rome blog publishes a news summary, entitled, The “Team Bergoglio” scandal, to summarize the news and to make it easier for new-comers to obtain quickly a total perspective on the scandal.

Dec. 28, 2014: The From Rome blog publishes, How “Team Bergoglio” managed the news on “Team Bergoglio”, which critiques the news coverage thus far and shows how little objective reporting there has been on the news of the vote-canvassing scandal.

January 3, 2015: The Italian blog, Bergoglionate, evidently responding to the problems listed in in the Dec. 28 editorial published by the From Rome blog, republishes the Italian version of Dr. Austen Ivereigh’s, The Great Reformer, chapter IX, which contains the explosive narrative regarding “Team Bergoglio”‘s vote-canvassing. The Italian translation, however, errs, in rendering “canvassing” as “sollecitare”, because in English, canvassing for votes is not simply the urging of a vote, but also the seeking of a promise to vote. Antonio Marcantonio rendered the English verb as “patteggiare” which captures this finality of the action better.

January 5, 2015: Espresso Online, publishes Sandro Magister’s, He is Pope. Elected by All the rules, which contains as an addendum citations from an study by a canonist Geraldina Boni, in which the thesis of Antonio Socci is rebutted, incompletely (full text of Boni in Italian is published simultaneously here); since, Socci says rightly that no more than 4 ballots can be made in 1 day, but Boni states that if 1 ballot was nullified on account of there being 1 extra blank vote-ballot (UDG 68), then no violation of the rules (UDG 63) took place, which is to merely counter’s Socci’s assertion with an assertion. The article also makes passing comment regarding “Team Bergoglio” but ignores any substantive consideration of UDG 81. That Sandro Magister considers the arguments regarding the invalidity of Cardinal Bergoglio’s election worthy of rebuttal is astounding of itself.

January 5, 2015: The From Rome blog publishes, Sandro Magister speaks about the invalidity of the 2013 Conclave, in which there is presented a critique of Boni’s argument and point out the key passage in the Latin original of UDG, about which the dispute between Boni and Socci should focus.

January 5, 2015: The From Rome blog publishes, Canon 171 can invalidate a Papal Election, in which there is presented an English translation of the commentary by a noted canonist, Fr. Jesús Miñambres, JCD, on the papal law, Universi Dominici Gregis, in which he sustains that canon 171 can invalidate a papal election, in contradiction to the defenders of Team Bergoglio who have sustained that UDG was immune from any terms of the CIC of 1983, being a special law not subject to Canon Law in general.

January 6, 2015: Nieuwsblad.be publishes Michaël Temmerman’s, ‘Franciscus werd paus dankzij kardinaal Danneels’, in the Flemish language, in which a noted Belgian Vaticanologist, Tom Zwaenepoel, says that if the allegations of vote-canvassing are true, the election of Cardinal Bergoglio is invalid. Temmerman also interviews the spokesman of Cardinal Daneels, who affirms that the Cardinal “certainly did not recruit any votes”. (This entry added to the Chronology on Jan 13, 2015; is republished in English translation by the From Rome blog on Jan. 16).

January 6, 2015: Nieuwsblad.be publishes an unsigned editorial, in Flemish, entitled, ‘Heisa rond boek over Franciscus is poging om paus te destabiliseren’, which cites the opinion of Rik Torfs, canonist and Rector of the Catholic University of Louvain, against the invalidity of the 2013 Conclave, on the basis of the acts described in Dr. Austen Ivereigh’s book, though he gives no reasons other than holding that what was done has always been done. This editorial appears to be a reaction to Zwaenepoel’s comment on the “Team Bergoglio” scandal. (Found and added to the Chronology on Jan. 15, 2015).

January 6, 2015: The From Rome blog publishes, From Ivereigh to Abdication, the Canonical steps implied by the “Team Bergoglio” scandal, which summarizes the apparent canonical case or consequences against “Team Bergoglio” and proposes a possible solution for the peace and unity of the Church. On February 2, 2015, the From Rome blog publishes its official Italian translation of this article, translation by Antonio Marcantonio.

January 7, 2015: Dr. Austen Ivereigh responds to Fr. Frank Brennan, S. J., in a piece entitled, Setting the Record Straight on Pope Francis, a reply to Frank Brennan. Fr. Brennan is a professor of law at the Australian Catholic University; he had attempted in part of his review of Ivereigh’s book to discount the probity of Ivereigh’s testimony in chapter 9.

January 9, 2015: The From Rome blog publishes, Ivereigh: I am confident of the veracity of my account, in which reprints and discusses what Dr. Ivereigh has now said regarding the composition and controversies in his account.

January 10, 2015: The From Rome blog publishes, “Team Bergoglio” and the legacy of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro, which shows the episcopal lineage of the alleged members of “Team Bergoglio”back to Cardinal Rampolla, an alleged Freemason, and his close associates.

January 11, 2015: The From Rome blog publishes, Who tallied votes for “Team Bergoglio”?, which republishes a photo of Cardinals Kasper, Marx and Poletto taken on March 4, 2013, as the open sessions of the 2013 Conclave began, and speculates that it was Cardinal Severino Poletto, the retired Archbishop of Torino.

January 15, 2015: The From Rome blog publishes, Cardinal Napier says there is no evidence for “Team Bergoglio” scandal, which republishes the Twitter dialogue between the Cardinal and the editor of this blog, with an explanation of the kinds of evidence necessary to impute a crime, call for an investigation and prove a crime.

January 16, 2015: The From Rome blog publishes, Francis became Pope thanks to Belgian Cardinal Danneels, which is an English translation of Michaël Temmerman’s, ‘Franciscus werd paus dankzij kardinaal Danneels’. (cf. above Jan. 6, 2015).

January 17, 2015: The From Rome blog publishes, Every Single Cardinal-Elector has right to demand resolution of “Team Bergoglio” scandal, which presents the canonical reasons why and how each Cardinal can act on the basis of the news regarding the scandal, chronologized here above..

January 30, 2015: The From Rome blog publishes, If the College of Cardinals Fails…, which explains that in cases of heresy in a Roman Pontiff, or the invalidity of his election, and/or conspiracy to aide and abet him heresy, if the competent authority vested in the College of Cardinals is not exercised, that right passes by iure divino atque naturali to the clergy of the Diocese of Rome.

February 2, 2015: The From Rome blog publishes, Da Ivereigh all’abdicazione, our official Italian translation of our January 6th Article, entitled, From Ivereigh to Abdication, the canonical steps implied by the “Team Bergoglio” scandal (see above).

February 6, 2015: The From Rome blog publishes, Se il Collego dei Cardinali non fa il suo dovere, our official Italian translation of our January 30th Article, entitled, If the College of Cardinals fails.

February 10, 2015: The From Rome blog publishes the untold story, “Team Bergoglio” is a heretical conspiracy to overthrow the Church of Christ, which names the members and cites their principle heresies.

September 24, 2015: Renowned Vaticanista, Edward Pentin, via his blog on NCR, publishes an article entitled, “Cardinal Danneels Admits to Being Part of a ‘Mafia’ Club opposed to Benedict XVI”, which reveals the decade long conspiracy, which was known as the Club of St. Gallen, to elect Bergoglio so as to radically change the Catholic Church. This is confirmation of the violation of UDG 81.

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