February 2018
Francis is So Bad, He's Good
THE EDITOR
“If we speak explicitly, ...what a terrible mess we will make. So we won’t speak plainly. |
- Pope Francis |
“Let what you say be simply `Yes' or `No'; anything more than this comes from evil.” |
- Jesus Christ |
As underlined last month, the filthy fingerprints of the Father of Lies are now all over the Vatican (aka Sodomy Central). Hiding in plain sight, his 'signature' is not only apparent in orgiastic eruptions, however. It is also clear and ever present in the leitmotif of this papacy — deception.
This devilish modus operandi is expressed in the slithering papal strategy above, confided by Francis to his Special Secretary for the 2014/15 Sinods, Archbishop Bruno Forte. In October 2014, it was Forte who penned the infamous text calling for the Church to "value" homosexuality. And it was Forte who subsequently revealed that his boss had told him,
“If we speak explicitly about Communion for the divorced and remarried, you don't know what a terrible mess we will make. So we won’t speak plainly, do it in a way that the premises are there, then I will draw out the conclusions.”
Far from "evil", as Our Lord Himself designated such deceit, Forte found this papal ploy so clever ("typical of a Jesuit," he sniggered) and so appealing, that he had no qualms whatsoever recounting it during a May 2016 conference on the equally deceitful Amoris Laetitia.
Wherever we look, it's that sort of papacy. There was even a deceptive symmetry about the Pope's Christmas message and subsequent stroll across St. Peter's Square to view the Vatican Nativity. After vespers in St. Peter's, having just bewailed a "wasted and wounded" year of "lies and injustices" (perpetrated by everyone except himself, of course) our pontifical hypocrite then visited and complimented a subversive depiction of Bethlehem; a 'wound, lie and injustice' that passed without papal comment, despite (or because?) it involved a blasphemous nudge and wink to the sodomitic culture he has cultivated.
Pink provocations
Under the pretext of clothing the naked, the life-size nativity featured a naked man lying on the straw right opposite the manger. He was being offered a cloth by a pilgrim, but as one of countless outraged onlookers truly observed, he was "too much a poster boy for the local gym to be a man in need of corporeal mercy." Indignant Catholics were not alone in voicing their disgust. Even ultra-liberal Facebook drew the line. It rejected an advert centred on the scene with the following explanation: "Your ad can’t include images that are sexually suggestive or provocative"!
Unlike Francis, who blithely praised the Nativity as "inspired by the works of mercy," its creator, Antonio Cantone, at least displayed signs of a conscience, albeit a guilty one. "It is not a campy nativity," he pouted, before conceding that it did contain "provocations." You might say! As Ann Barnhardt discovered:
It turns out that the whole Vatican Nativity scene was made in the Sanctuary of Montevergine, a Benedictine monastery outside of Naples. The Sanctuary of Montevergine has long been notoriously and blasphemously claimed as a mascot and meeting place for sodomites and transvestites.
[In 1256], a false story was started by sodomites that two sodomite men, after being caught, convicted and condemned to death by exposure for their sickening capital crimes by being tied to a tree, were miraculously saved by the Virgin of Montevergine, whereupon the two sodomites… wait for it… promptly celebrated by sodomizing each other because their “love” had been ratified by the Queen of Heaven,
or something.
Blasphemy of the sickest and most demonic sort. This blasphemy spread, and now the Sanctuary of Montevergine is used by Italian sodomites as a mascot for gay pride marches and drag queen conventions. The biggest gay pride march
at the Shrine of Montevergine, happens, even more blasphemously, on February 2, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin.
So the Vatican Nativity scene was made at the Shrine of the so-called “Gay Madonna”, and there is an image of the Icon of the Madonna of Montevergine in the Vatican Nativity scene itself – a CLEAR SIGNAL to the sex perverts that the scene is a bow to them.
So, to all the people who remarked that the figure of the Blessed Virgin in the Vatican Nativity scene looks really, really masculine, almost like a man in drag, I think you have
been vindicated.
Just as Freemasons on every continent, but especially in Italy, imprint their occult symbols on monuments, buildings and structures of every kind, so the inclusion in the Vatican Nativity of male erotica, a masculine Madonna and, in one corner, a replica of the Icon of Montevirgine — known in Italy as "The Gay Madonna" and "The Madonna of the Drag Queens" — were Pink Mafia 'calling cards which cried out: We're everywhere! Subverting! Deceiving! Defiling all that is holy, wholesome, innocent and pure!
Such 'pink provocations' are now legion and flagrant.
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia has even befouled his coat of arms with the 'gay' rainbow (yet another beautiful symbol the sodomites co-opted to corrupt). He has no fear of papal rebuke since he was chosen by Francis to head the Pontifical Council for Life despite his public support of the homosexual political movement; support he further signposted by commissioning a homosexual artist to adorn his former cathedral in Terni with a massive "homo-erotic" mural featuring an "erotic" depiction of Christ.
Painted by Argentinian sodomite Ricardo Cinalli, the pornographic mural depicts an almost nude Christ figure lifting two nets filled with contorting human figures, including a nude depiction of Paglia himself. Cinalli confirmed that Paglia had approved every stage of the work. He added that Paglia had drawn the line only at depicting the figures in the act of copulating, but agreed "that the erotic aspect is the most notable among the people inside the nets."
Creepy Curia
Thus, forever fixated on political deceptions and lies, our worldly pontiff happily ignores the deceit, mendacity and associated perversions tearing the Church apart. He ignores them because he facilitates and personifies those very traits — as the Forte revelation, the Paglia appointment and a Curia stacked with his creepy placemen make crystal clear.
Aflame with radical Modernism, Vatican Congregations, Pontifical Councils and Institutes, and other curial bodies are all billowing forth the smoke of satan. Cleansed of orthodox heads and advisers they are now run by sinister figures like Francesco Coccopalmerio (Legislative Texts), Pio Vito Pinto (Roman Rota) and the aforementioned Vincenzo Paglia (Council for Life/Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences), to name just a few. Yet if there is 'something of the night' about all these men, and so many other Bergoglian appointees beyond Rome, it goes double for the man who appointed them.
Schismatic agenda
Modernism alone does not account for Francis. Quite apart from doctrinal issues, he exudes a pungent combo of mental illness, complicity and blackmail. How else to account for the unhinged rants, the perverts he coddles, and, above all, the noxious path to formal schism he is not only set upon but talks of treading? Der Spiegel of 23 December 2016 reported him having said, "It is not impossible that I will go down in history as the one who split the Catholic Church." A boast that flags his instability, it is not, however, an idle one. Daily reports confirm what we all sense: that his cherished place in history (infamy more like) is nigh.
Among several schismatic snippets filed at the time of writing, Bishop Bode, Vice President of the German Bishops' Conference, wants to bless active homo pairs because he feels that "it is difficult to say from the outside whether someone is in the state of mortal sin." [LifeSiteNews, 10/1/18] Yet in order to comprehend sodomy as mortally sinful behaviour, and so conform himself to the plain-speaking counsel of Christ, it is not so difficult for His Lordship simply to Google the hard science on destructive sodomitic fruits. Like his pontifical role-model, however, the Bishop "won't speak plainly." Instead, he babbles. "We have to reflect upon the question as to how to assess in a differentiated manner a relationship between two homosexual persons," he proclaims. "Is there not so much positive and good and right so that we have to be more just?"
As Jesus taught, this sort of evasive, convoluted verbiage — ideological blather that will not countenance a "yes" or "no" — "comes from evil." And schism is its evil end.
Mathias von Gersdorff for one, a well-known German pro-life activist and author, is in no doubt that the Bode statement could "introduce a new phase of destruction." Those "German Catholics who are orthodox" must prepare themselves, he says, since
The German progressivism does not wish a few things changed here and there, but it wishes to scrap the whole of Catholic teaching and to create a fundamentally new religion.
He concludes that
The “normal” Catholic is perplexed and asks himself: How far can the Catholic Church in Germany continue this path of destruction and still be called “Catholic”? When does it come to the point that there exists the moral duty to refuse to pay the Church tax?
After so many rebellious decades overflowing with heresies and scandals of every unspeakable kind, that orthodox and informed German faithful like von Gersdorff still need to pose such queries to their brethren rhetorically, instead of simply condemning out of hand the de-facto schismatic German den of iniquity personified by Bishop Bode, speaks volumes.
Specifically, it speaks to half a century of neo-conservative snowflakes pussyfooting around and fiddling while Rome burned; to their refusal to 'face facts fearlessly'; to their cowardly reluctance to call out faithless priests, bad bishops and complicit popes. Instead, they have demonised faithful minorities for their righteous outrage and dutiful resistance, treating defenders of the Faith of our Fathers like leprous Untouchables. It is true of every local Church. But the German case is particular, since this fear of breaking ranks, both to condemn the corruptors and to exercise their "moral duty to refuse to pay the Church tax," has given the filthy rich German Church heretical leverage in Rome.
The inevitable outcome was the Vatican quid pro quo for German deutschmarks: namely, John Paul II handing red hats to arch-miscreants Walter Kasper and Karl Lehmann; effectively mainstreaming Germany's preferential option for heresy and schism. At length, this enabled the devilish resurrection of one Cardinal Kasper. Long written off as yesterday's Modernist provocateur, he suddenly re-emerged in 2013 as the new pontiff's "favourite theologian," thereby breathing new life and influence into the rotting corpse of Lutheranised German "Catholicism." Consequently, together with its ongoing financial muscle, vocal and practical German support, by Kasper and his heretical acolytes (Cardinal Marx, Bishop Bode et. al.), now underpins the Pope's schismatic decentralisation agenda. What goes around comes around.
Deceitful Dictator
This is all bad news that we must confront, face down or simply see through to its inevitable exhaustion. But wait... there is good news, too! For, as we rocket to rock bottom, leading neo-cons are beginning to emerge from their sinfully lukewarm slumber — at the eleventh hour but nonetheless thankfully — to raise the alarm. Even those still happily trapped in the Vatican II Matrix (of hermeneutic fudge, compromise and impossible squaring of circles) are ratcheting up their criticisms. The ensuing review of a damning papal analysis by one such Matrix-bound commentator
is indicative.
Unsurprisingly, though, it was a more traditionalist critique — The Dictator Pope, a small book-length summary of the last five years—that first upped the ante; allowing neo-conservatives to surf its more voluble wave, as Kremlin Santa Marta hunted down its pseudonymous author, "Marcantonio Colonna" (the name of a 16th-century Italian aristocrat who served as admiral of the papal fleet in the Battle of Lepanto).
Published last year in Italy, the present writer would have preferred The Deceitful Dictator to The Dictator Pope. Sincethe whole heretical, perverted "mess" that constitutes Jorge's schismatic path is simply the trickle-down effect of his Papacy of Deceit; the multiple layers of which Colonna unpacks and presents with admirable simplicity and clarity. 'Ambiguity' is the polite descriptive widely employed to disguise this calculated deception which, as Colonna confirms, has defined the entire clerical career of Jorge Bergoglio.
In a review of The Dictator Pope, Robert Royal finds the case laid out by Colonna "largely convincing":
that Pope Francis has carefully cultivated an image in public as the apostle of mercy, kindness, and openness; in private, he’s authoritarian, given to profanity-laced outbursts of anger, and manipulative in pursuing his agenda.
"Largely convincing" is neo-con understatement on stilts! True, not every single solitary claim and quotation is sourced and watertight. And so what? For the same sensible reasons that dictate extreme caution under any dictatorship, quoted informants are not named. And while no hard evidence is produced to confirm growing rumours of an epic scandal involving the diversion of Peter's Pence "to aid the funding of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign," it would hardly surprise. We need only consider the Pope's intense dislike of Donald Trump (whom he accused of not being a Christian), his overweening ambition to become the "leader of the global left" [Wall Street Journal, Dec. 2016], and his wanton use and abuse of papal power. In that light, plundering the 50+ million euros contributed yearly to Peter's Pence in order to fund Crooked Hillary is a plausible plot. As Colonna explains:
We need to understand that the key to Francis's reckless style – the indifference to reform, the tyrannical acts, the feverish quest for a popular image – is that his prime concern is not in fact the government of the Church. [Austin] Ivereigh [the Pope's sycophantic biographer/hagiographer] has traced in detail Francis's ambition to make himself a world leader in the political field; he set out with a bombastic vision of the “decadence” of Western civilisation which would be exploited by Latin America to re-assert itself, and his dream was to rally the continent into “la patria grande” (the great fatherland) to challenge the imperialist dominance of the United States.
[...]
[However], the election of Donald Trump shattered the assumptions on which Francis's strategy was based. With all its macho Latin American rhetoric, the plan depended on the presence in the White House of a liberal president willing to abase himself (or herself) to Latin American claims. It collapses before a president whose response to trouble-makers beyond the Rio Grande is to build a wall against them. That is why in 2016 Pope Francis staked all his chips on a Clinton presidency.
After those around him, "beginning with Cardinal Parolin," insisted that Donald Trump had no hope of winning,
on Francis's orders APSA [The Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See] financed Hilary Clinton's presidential campaign (it is now being said that the money used for it came from Peter's Pence, the donations of the faithful made supposedly for charitable purposes).
Regardless of tut-tutting over this as yet unverifiable (but clearly credible) claim, Colonna's calling out of Pope Francis as a monumental fraud, based on the public record, is not "largely" but totally convincing.
Profane formation
His bare-knuckle portrait of Pope Francis recounts a good deal of the information we have supplied in these pages concerning the St. Gallen mafia, the Synod sell-out, the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate takedown, the Knights of Malta decapitation, et. al.. But he also reinforces the tragic truth of our ghastly predicament with much other telling information and analysis besides — not least the corrupting ecclesiastical and socio-political background:
We should bear in mind that Jorge Bergoglio is a man brought up in a debased political culture, and trained in a religious order whose traditions of obedience and of political and social involvement were disrupted and distorted by the upheaval of the 1960s. This means that he was less formed in the long-rooted cultural disciplines that kept his predecessors up to certain standards. The Church has never been a stranger to clergy, even those of high character, who have let their religious vocation take too political a slant, and Bergoglio never showed the purity of dedication that would protect against such an error. Before his election, he did not distinguish himself by any of the spiritual or doctrinal writings or preachings for which many popes were known. His lack of interest in doctrine and liturgy is familiar, and even some of his habits of prayer have excited remark. Lucrecia Rego de Planas commented that when celebrating Mass Pope Francis never genuflects to the tabernacle or the consecrated Host as liturgical rule prescribes, and he was known for that omission long before old age made it physically pardonable. What are Catholics to make of a Pope who omits the signs of reverence to the Blessed Sacrament that all priests and faithful give by rule and by tradition?
Sociopathic traits
Compounding all of that are the manifest psychological 'issues'. Colonna cites the assessment of the Father General of the Jesuits, Peter Kolvenbach, made in response to a request from the Archbishop of Buenos Aires to make then Father Bergoglio, SJ, an auxiliary bishop:
Since Father Bergoglio, as a Jesuit, would need a dispensation to be appointed, it was necessary to obtain a report from his order, for which Cardinal Quarracino applied in 1991. It was provided by the Jesuit General, and it represents the most damning character study of Jorge Bergoglio composed by anyone before his election as Pope. The text of the report has never been made public, but the following account is given by a priest who had access to it before it disappeared from the Jesuit archive: Father Kolvenbach accused Bergoglio of a series of defects, ranging from habitual use of vulgar language to deviousness, disobedience concealed under a mask of humility, and lack of psychological balance; with a view to his suitability as a future bishop, the report pointed out that he had been a divisive figure as Provincial of his own order.
"It is not surprising that, on being elected Pope, Francis made efforts to get his hands on the existing copies of the document," adds Colonna, "and the original filed in the official Jesuit archives in Rome has disappeared." As regards the fairness of the assessment, after making due allowance for the hostility harboured at the time against Father Bergoglio by the Argentine Jesuits, Colonna concludes that "the Kolvenbach Report can hardly be read as the depiction of a model religious by his superior." A polite way of saying that sociopaths do not make model superiors.
Peronist papacy
To this dysfunctional psyche, Argentina added a ruthless Peronism. Among numerous examples of that cut-throat persona, Colonna quotes a curial prelate well-disposed to the Knights of Malta who privately "confided in the knights verbatim":
“You need to realise that Pope Francis is a ruthless and vindictive dictator, and if you make the slightest attempt at resistance he will destroy the Order.”
Rank betrayal, manipulation, humiliation and destruction are among the tyrannical tools employed against his opponents, or those in disfavour. As for the rule of law, Francis treats it with the reckless disregard one would expect of a Peronist dictator. Colonna recounts the precipice to which Francis dragged the Vatican by his outrageous assault on the sovereignty of the Knights of Malta:
Within days of the dismissal of the Grand Master a chorus of criticism arose, notably from lawyers, against what the Pope had done. It was pointed out that, if the Holy See could ride roughshod over the sovereignty of the Order of Malta, there was nothing to stop the government of Italy from sending in its police to investigate the finances of the Vatican City. There is little doubt that these considerations stopped Pope Francis and Cardinal Parolin from marching in there and then and taking over the Order unconditionally, as their initial declarations suggested. It was a characteristic feature in an episode in which the considerations of power and financial control were to the fore and morality was in slight regard.
Governmentally, Colonna confirms that the "political and unspiritual" ways previously cultivated by Cardinals Sodano and Bertone, the Secretaries of State for John Paul II and Benedict XVI, have continued on and worsened:
The control of the Secretariat of State over the rest of the Curia has become more absolute than ever. And everyone, from cardinals to monsignori, is kept in a state of permanent nerves by the naggings, the brusque public criticisms, the sackings and the covert undermining that are the hallmark of the new regime.
[...] In this regime, the prelates who enjoy favour are sycophants like Cardinal Coccopalmerio, who used his influence to protect the child-molesting priest Inzoli [a notorious pervert with whom Francis has been photographed happily holding hands - Ed. CO] and who employed as his secretary Monsignor Luigi Capozzi, until he was arrested in a homosexual drugs party. Or an unreformed wheeler-dealer like Cardinal Calcagno, whose murky past as bishop of Savona does not disqualify him from being in charge of the Church's wealth.
Cardinal Calcagno is a central villain in a hair-raising section titled, "What happened to the reform of the Vatican finances?" In a familiar pattern, Pope Francis first made big play of reforming the Vatican's perennially crooked financial structures and dealings, only then to fire the good guys and further entrench the wicked!
Follow the money
One of the financial 'white hats' was the outspoken Cardinal Pell, who, within months of being made head of the Secretariat for the Economy in 2014, "announced that he had found 936 million euros in the various Vatican dicasteries which had not been entered in the balance sheets, and by February 2015 the figure had been raised to 1.4 billion." As one might assume, this made Pell rather unpopular with the Italian 'black hats,' including Calcagno, whose evil empire was threatened:
The opposition to Cardinal Pell has been headed by four cardinals who are interested not merely in stalling the financial reform but returning the Vatican structures to the position before Pell appeared on the scene. We may begin with Cardinal Domenico Calcagno, who has been president of APSA since 2011 and who is the most scandalous of the four. ["Vatileaks" journalist] Gianluigi Nuzzi, in one of his more outspoken comments, describes Calcagno as “the scheming prelate and wily connoisseur of the Curia's secrets.” Before being appointed to the Curia, Calcagno had been Bishop of Savona, where between 2002 and 2003 he ignored repeated instances of sexual violence against minors by one of his priests, simply moving him on to another parish. What is even more shocking is that Calcagno is still under investigation for real-estate dealings which harmed the diocese's finances. It is a commentary on Francis's pontificate that such a background is not thought incompatible with the holding of one of the key financial posts in the Vatican.
The Pope's non-response to the corrrupt behaviour of another 'black hat' is just as telling:
In 2014 Cardinal Versaldi was caught in an intercepted telephone call advising the head of the Vatican's Bambino Gesù hospital to keep from the Pope the news that 30 million euros of the hospital's funds had been misappropriated. The response to this discovery, a year into Pope Francis's papacy, was revealingly mild. Cardinal Versaldi lost the Prefecture of Economic Affairs but was rewarded by being made Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, the position he still holds. From there he maintains constant relations with Cardinal Calcagno and is sparing no effort to recover his former power.
Joined at the hip with Calcagno and Versaldi is Cardinal Bertello, President of the Governorate of the Vatican City State, "whose lack of enthusiasm for transparency was seen in the early stages of the reform efforts." And finally,
Above these three is the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. His resistance to the new regime of transparency supposedly introduced by Pope Francis has been documented by Gianluigi Nuzzi, but his main characteristic is his determination not to give up an ounce of his enormous power. In that cause, he immediately identified Cardinal Pell as the chief enemy, and he has devoted himself in the past three years to stalling his efforts at reform and clipping his power. In this, Pope Francis has given him a free hand, repeatedly granting his demands to chip away at the new financial structure that seemed to be put in place in 2014.
Notice a recurring theme (nightmare) here? How the open and straightforward are neutralised and the devious rewarded? Colonna records that
Cardinal Pell has repeatedly asked the Pope for Cardinal Calcagno's dismissal, and Francis has replied that he will dismiss him if proof is shown. In fact proof after proof has been submitted but Calcagno continues to be protected. ... In the war against Pell that Cardinal Calcagno has been steadily winning, he has recovered for APSA the supervision of the Vatican's financial assets which had been transferred to [Pell's] Secretariat of the Economy.
And so, for all the Pope's deceitful grandstanding on financial reform, Colonna truly states that
The drive against corruption in the Vatican has been reduced to a mockery by the officials who continue to hold high office. The most telling sign is the fact that not a single prosecution for financial crime has taken place in the Tribunal of the Vatican City State under Pope Francis. The Vatican's watchdog agency, the Financial Information Authority, has referred 17 reports to the Office of the Promoter of Justice, but none of them has resulted in a prosecution, let alone a conviction.
Whistleblowers, on the other hand, are hammered. "Monsignor Lucio Vallejo, the former Secretary of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs," for example, "who was tried in the summer of 2016 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison (which he served in the Vatican's own cells), having released secret documents to Gianluigi Nuzzi with the intention of exposing the flawed reforms." It is also strongly suspected (given no credible alternative explanation) that the diligent Vatican Auditor General, Libero Milone, was forced out of his position and intimidated by a SWAT-like raid on his office because he was on the verge of unearthing yet another massive scandal.
Totalitarian tactics
The Milone outrage is worth recounting at length in order to underscore the textbook tyranny of the Bergoglianistas:
After months of silence, on 24 September [2017] Milone publicly revealed the circumstances of his dismissal, and his first-hand account is followed here, supplemented by some details which have been added by eye-witnesses.
Milone related that on the morning of 19 June [Deputy Secretary of State] Archbishop Becciu ordered him to resign in a private interview, and stated that the order came from Pope Francis in person. Despite the protests of Mr Milone that the complaints against him were fabricated, the dismissal went ahead in the style of a totalitarian state. On the same day Vatican Police raided the Auditor General’s office, accompanied by members of the Vatican Fire Department. They detained and interrogated Mr Milone for hours, often shouting at him; this after seizing all his electronic equipment, personal and business, as well as all files present in his office. They then proceeded to force open the door to the office of the Deputy Auditor General, Ferruccio Pannico, to box and carry away his files. Curiously, keys to Mr Pannico’s office and the combination to the safe were both available to the police officers, but a louder, more intimidating procedure using axes, crowbars, hammers, and chisels, was preferred. Mr Pannico, who was absent from the office, was also forced to resign the following day. Simple employees and unfortunate visitors to the office that day were detained and deprived of their cell phones during their interrogation. Milone's and Pannico's resignations came as the result of an ultimatum: resign or be arrested. They were obliged to sign letters sealing their lips, and Mr Milone in his interview of 24 September was still only able to reveal part of the truth.
[...] .... Milone revealed that following his dismissal he wrote a letter to the Pope, through a secure channel, denouncing the injustice and protesting that he was the victim of “una montatura” (a set-up). He never received a reply, nor has he been successful in his efforts to speak personally to Pope Francis.
Among the questions raised by this "grievous episode," Colonna poses the pertinent query:
How can Pope Francis believe possible a reform of the Vatican finances if he himself has placed virtually all power, police and justice department included, in the hands of the very structures and persons that were responsible for the corruption in the first place?
Finally, he asks:
Do these facts indicate that Pope Francis is against financial reform in itself? That seems an unjustified conclusion, but from his point of view it comes a long way behind the power games that are at the heart of his governing style.
Like Cardinals Müller and Burke, Cardinal Pell experienced the full force of that "governing style" — which has more to do with arbitrary papal diktats than holy Catholic dictates:
Looking at such things as the financial and administrative reform of the Curia, or the drive against sex-offending priests, Pell has commented: “Francis is the opposite of Theodore Roosevelt. He talks loud and carries a small stick.” Pope Francis does not like people of that sort around him, especially in such a position of power as he entrusted to Pell in 2014. But neither is it his style to hit at such figures directly. The apt comment has been made: “Rather than pulling a nail, Pope Francis finds another tool.” And the tools he prefers to Pell are Cardinal Calcagno, who is beholden to him for the restoration of his power, and Cardinal Parolin, who as Secretary of State has implemented and consented to all the tyrannical measures of his pontificate.
And so we find Comrade Parolin dutifully promoting Amoris Laetitia as a "new paradigm" — a "change in attitude that the Pope asks of us" — which implies, he said, "a new spirit" or a "new approach." [Vatican News video-interview, 11/1/18]. The Orwellian jargon hardly masks the obvious intent: to dump the "old" supernatural Gospel of grace taught by Jesus, and take up the "new" secular social gospel taught by Jorge; which "change" the ambitious Parolin will embrace with sycophantic relish.
Unrelieved failure
Before all this, is it the least bit surprising that Francis has become a papal step too far for party-line post-conciliar neocons? To finish off where we began, the Vatican Nativity debacle even disconcerted the respected publisher of neo-conservative monthly Inside the Vatican, Robert Moynihan, whose bread and butter depends on good relations with the current dictatorship.
When the phlegmatic Moynihan ran in to two old friends in front of the manger scene in the middle of St Peter's square, he asked them what they thought of it. "Terrible," one said. "I do not like it at all." In his regular email newsletter, Moynihan described the object that offended his friend as "a naked man, with only a wisp of cloth over his private parts." His report went on:
"But this is not the thing that most concerns us," the second person said. "We are concerned about the decorations on the Christmas tree from Poland. We have not seen a single religious symbol, not a single Christian symbol, on the tree."
"Really?" I said. "Let's look at it."
So we walked around the tree. And I too saw that there seemed not to be a single Christian symbol on the tree, unless the star on the top of the tree could be considered a sign of the star that led the Magi to the Christ-child.
"Look," said my friend. "There are peace signs, and the oriental yin-yang signs, but no angels, no depictions of the Magi, no images of Mary, nothing but universal symbols. Many nuns in Rome say they are shocked and are very worried about the message these decorations are sending to the youngest.
Judging by figures for papal audiences in that same piazza, it would seem both young and old alike are sending their own message about this humanistic substitute for Catholicism! Held more or less weekly, the audiences used to attract tens of thousands of the faithful. Colonna provides these official statistics for average attendance at these events since Francis became Pope:
2013: 51,617
2014: 27,883
2015: 14,818
"For 2016, no figures have been made available," he relates, "but they are understood to be under 10,000: less than one fifth of what they were four years ago, and in Benedict XVI's time":
To those who see the dwindling bands within St Peter's colonnade, the message is clear: the People's Pope is being deserted by the people. Mass attendance has also been falling in Italy, and it seems in the rest of the world. Francis's pontificate, which was expected to revivify the Church, after four years of hype is proving an unrelieved failure.
Winnowing fan
Make that nearly five years of hype and failure, and counting! Even the irrepressible nuns in Rome — Olympian papolators! — are now "very worried." A sure sign that inscrutable Providence has placed before us a pontificate too overwhelmingly evil to be ignored by anyone; a papal cataclysm to awaken and enflame even the most lukewarm hearts, minds and souls.
Francis, in other words, is so bad, he's good! After the fashion of Nebuchadnezzar, Paul VI and Archbishop Bugnini, he is an instrument of God's winnowing fan; a scourge being utilised to chastise His children as He separates the wheat from the chaff, purifying His Church.
So let us humbly accept and patiently endure this Dictator Pope — this Bitter Beatitude and Deceitful Instrument of our purification and renewal. But let us also pray, ardently,
... that the participants in the next Conclave first of all make sure that there is no clique trying to turn the election to their own agenda; secondly, that they know well whom they are electing. Let him be a man of established repute in the Church, and above all known as a man of God and not a politician; a man whose priorities are the spiritual treasures he is called to guard; a man who teaches doctrine openly and not in ambiguous back-room deals; a man who will be a sincere reformer and will not ally himself with the corrupt in a bid to control the Church. It is for the cardinals to do the right thing in their consciences and leave the rest in the hands of God. And let us pray that, rare as is the freak of nature that has been unintentionally sprung on the See of Peter, it may be equally long before another such catastrophe is again visited on the Catholic Church.
With these words "Marcantonio Colonna" closes his most excellent summary review and analysis of the Francis pontificate. A winnowing aid par excellence, the English edition is currently available in electronic (Kindle) format only. For the sake of souls and Holy Church may it soon be available in print, too.