Rorate Caeli

Papacy in Collapse: "The Crisis of the Bergoglio Party (which will leave the Church devastated) has begun" (Socci)

"FRANCIS, THE WRECKING BALL"
1. Just a couple of weeks ago, still before the end of the Synod, our special guest-writer and expert of Roman ways Don Pio Pace warned: "are we going towards the failure of the 'opening' pontificate of Francis? The Postconciliar Church seems intrinsically ungovernable."

2. This Thursday, Nov. 5, Damian Thompson in the cover article for the Spectator details what he calls "the Catholic civil war". But the guilty party is clear from Thompson's conclusion: "It’s beginning to look as if Jorge Bergoglio is the man who inherited the papacy and then broke it." (The Spectator cover illustrates the point well.)

3. Also this Thursday, Italian religious analyst Antonio Socci published a text that goes in the same direction as Thompson's: the collapse of the pontificate amidst the civil war begun by the Pope himself. And Socci goes further: he identifies the Bergoglio Party (the same that caused the resignation of Benedict XVI and the election of Cardinal Bergoglio) as the center of the current crisis. It is indeed very important to remember that it was the CURIA that caused the vexations that led to the complete weakening of Pope Ratzinger, and the Sodano Curia and (what we now know as the Mafia Club of) the St-Gallen Group, led by ultra-progressive Cardinals such as Danneels and the heirs of Martini, who congealed around Bergoglio in the momentous 2013 conclave.
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The Crisis of the Bergoglio Party (which will leave the Church devastated) has begun…

Antonio Socci,
“Libero”
November 5, 2015

A personal premise: in 2012, I wrote a kind of fantasy-novel, “The Days of the Tempest” wherein I told the tale of a new foreign Pope who would have arrived in 2015, closed the IOR, hosted persecuted Christians in the Vatican palaces and would have lived in the, working-class suburb of Torpignattara in Rome. I was very keen on the idea of evangelical renewal.

FAILURE

Today, unfortunately, we have to recognize that in three years Pope Bergoglio hasn’t done what we expected him to do or what he said he was going to do. He attempted to regulate the curial and economic machine, but in reverse, with confusing results and at times was counterproductive.

Further, he has caused the Church to collapse into doctrinal confusion which is much, more serious than any financial scandal.

Is it the fault of obscure opponents? Nonsense. Only in dictatorships are the failures of the regime justified with presumed sabotages from its opponents. The Argentine Pope has said many times that he wanted chaos as he considered it creative: he should be pleased now.

The Vallejo-Chaouqui business however, certainly doesn’t conjure up “the conservatives of the past” but seems, if anything, the start of the crumbling of the “ Bergoglian Party”.

The newspapers that are talking about a war between Pope Bergoglio and the Curia, forget to say that it was precisely the party of the Curia that “invented” and elected Pope Bergoglio. Today that Party finds itself in the same situation as the Democratic Party (P.D. [note: the Socialist Party in Italy]). Bitterly regretting its choice; because Pope Bergoglio is “unfit”. Inadequate. This cannot be ignored…

The other day, the New Yorker reported that among those who elected him in March 2013, he wouldn’t even get ten votes from them today.

The present Pope is a son of that Peronist political culture which brought Argentina to collapse i.e. a very wealthy country gone bankrupt. Pope Bergoglio himself has frankly acknowledged that in his younger days, his past function as head of the Argentine Jesuits was a disaster. A top man in the “Company” declared to an American journalist, that, at that time, “Bergoglio created an awful lot of problems. He has some remarkable gifts, but was surrounded by a court of very faithful pasdaran (guards) and a personality cult creates divisions.” He added “it will be a catastrophe for the Church to have someone like him in the Apostolic See. It took us two decades to try and fix the chaos he created.”

THE MASS-MEDIA CIRCUS

The Italian mass-media lives in a bubble of papal worship, similar to an idolatrous obsession. They see Pope Bergoglio as the absolute Good and whoever dissents from this is depicted as an emissary of Evil or a dark conspirator. You don’t find any news about Pope Bergoglio in the newspapers, only hymns, sung masses and genuflexions.

Even those who have written books using confidential documents from the Vatican Offices, feel the need to assert that they are doing this to help the Pope in his messianic work of renewal in the Church

In fact, reading the newspapers, those who openly dissented from the Kasper-Bergoglio thesis, it seems, are deliberately being hit. But must the mass-media control Power closely or hunt down the dissidents? Then we have the absurdity of the Vatican communiqué regarding these recent events which had to specify: “it is absolutely necessary to avoid the mistake in thinking that this is a way of helping the Pope’s mission.”

This is a surreal specification which betrays the concern of the "Bergoglian establishment", i.e. by trying to help “The Big Boss” you end up harming him.

On the other hand, once the deadly mechanism of the mass-media circus is triggered as an instrument of power - and Pope Bergoglio did this unscrupulously, for instance, by using his brotherly friend Scalfari to reveal what he truly thinks – then what occurs is that you lose control of that same mass-media machine. Then, if there is some unpleasant news the word “conspiracy” is shouted, as happened in the case of Monsignor Charamsa’s “coming out”. Yet, what induced him to do this if not the Bergoglian ambiguities and choices on the subject of homosexuality? In fact, Charamsa hit out ruthlessly at the Cura, which he accused of “homophobia”. He is also a strong supporter of Bergoglio.

The Bergoglian crisis – even after the double defeat at the two Synods – is evident. Of course, the “Marino of the Vatican” [Note: Ignazio Marino is the inept former mayor of Rome who has recently resigned] is sustained by the enthusiastic support of the secular media.

For months now we have been deluged with exaltations about the Pope from the newspapers and television. Pope Bergoglio himself is embarrassed about it: “I don’t like the mythology of Pope Francis” he confessed to De Bortoli. Nonetheless, he then makes himself like it, since he is using the papal-worshipping circus as a formidable means of pressure inside the Church, to force Her to bend to the Scalfarian agenda.

Still – as I said – not everything is always controllable in the information business. The rare times something dissonant emerges with respect to the uniform “Giornalista Collettivo” ["Collective Journalist", i.e. journalists speaking in one voice] choir – (as Giuliano Ferrara named it) – from Casa Santa Marta, the “bombardiers” begin to soar.

A TUMOUR

It happened twenty days ago with the “Quotidiano Nazionale” which had published the news of the Pope’s supposed brain tumor. The same night, at midnight actually, in a totally irregular way, Father Lombardi, caused an uproar about it, almost as if it were a sacrilege.

A reaction which surprised and aroused suspicion since popes’ illnesses have always been fantasized about, without these virulent reactions from “across the Tiber”. Obviously news can also be fabrications; accidents of the profession. Nonetheless a fabrication is never a conspiracy. The only question to ask about news is this one: is it true or false?

Instead the “Giornalista Collettivo” choir immediately picked up the Vatican refrain of “a conspiracy against the Pope”. In the end, after days of conspiracy hunting, we were still in the dark about the situation. Everyone accepted the denials and the thing was buried.

Here then are some “pearls” found in the denials. Professor Fukushima, among other things, said: “perhaps the misunderstanding comes from a brain operation I did on a person of similar age and build as that of the Pontiff, with a name that sounded similar.” The neurosurgeon, Gaetano Liberti, Fukushima’s student, who also works in the ‘San Rossore’ clinic declared (in denial of course) among other things: “we are doctors and we wouldn’t have violated in anyway the privacy of any patient, even less so a figure as influential as Pope Francis.”

After all this, the director of the “Quotidiano Nazionale” , Andrea Cangini, an honest and serious journalist, gave an interview to “Tempo”.

Question: “Does the Holy Father really have a benign brain tumor? Eveyone is denying it, do you confirm it?” Answer: “Certainly. What we wrote was verified. But I assure you we have no intention of backing civil wars in the Vatican.

Another question: “You confirmed you had documental proof. Of what type?” Answer: “If I gave you more elements, I’d put my source in jeopardy. It is written proof.”

In the face of such a declaration it was natural to expect an invitation from Father Lombardi to publish this “proof”. Unfortunately the Vatican was careful in not challenging the “Quotidiano Nazionale”. It’s strange. Cangini is an esteemed professional and “QN” is an important daily newspaper, usually far from temerarious rows. In any normal country it would have been asked to show the documental proof about what it had reported. Instead – nothing. Having left this story in suspension might be another reason for Pope Bergoglio’s waning, and of the uproar inside the Curia and his “party”. Yet one has the impression that the uproar has only just begun.


Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana