It has just been announced that the Italian news source "Il Sismographo" has decided to shut down. Its editor, Luis Badilla, was a great source for Church news: from an “establishment” perspective, yet not censoring things that don’t fit a convenient narrative. Below is a translation of the last article on the blog (source here), and remember, the author is by no means to be classified as a traditionalist. -- PAK
The manner, style and methods -- as well as the narrative discourse -- with which Pope Bergoglio has exercised his supreme ministry as Universal Pastor, as Bishop of Rome and Successor of the Apostle Peter, have made it clear that one man in charge in Christ's Church -- moreover absolute ruler for life -- is a form of government that is now grossly inadequate, deficient and risky. This is a story that has been dragging on for decades and which Cardinal Bergoglio emphasized a great deal in the pre-Conclave meetings of March 2013.
Now, however, with Pope Francis this crisis has seriously deepened and the excesses and arbitrariness have reached intolerable limits that damage the credibility and authority of the Holy See.
It is true that this matter is very delicate and complex and technically not easy to follow. The duty to simplify, however, without sloppy schematism, obliges us to be as clear as possible.
So let us say at once that the nature and mission of the Successor of the one to whom Christ entrusted the helm of his Church is not in question.
The point is another: until when, in the 21st century and beyond, can the government of the assembly of the Catholic faithful composed of nearly 1.4 billion people -- the now famous "holy and faithful People of God" -- be entrusted to a single person without whose consent not a single leaf moves? Why is every decision, important and diriment, entrusted to the most hermetic possible secrecy with no real transparency to the point that hardly even crumbs of truth are available?
The issue appears even more delicate if one adds to these questions others concerning senility, a natural stage of life, insidious to physical as well as mental strength. Why deal with these questions with the usual hypocritical modesty or in hallway corners or through accounts in the name of fictitious names?
The failures of this form and mode of absolute government natural life during have been seen in these almost 11 years of Pope Bergoglio's pontificate.
There is now a need to question how the Church is governed and until when. How does the Pontiff exercise power and until when does he exercise it, are two questions of great relevance that have been highlighted by Pope Francis, unintentionally.
No one expected the elected Pope Bergoglio to have a progressive pontificate as repeated ad nauseam by the careerist court and the journalists' court. [This is a highly dubious statement: see Henry Sire's lecture here.-PK] Father Bergoglio was never part of the progressive clergy either from Argentina or Latin America, quite the contrary. Father Bergoglio entered the episcopal hierarchy because he was wanted and protected to the end by Latin America's most reactionary cardinal ever, Antonio Quarracino, from whom we heard that "Msgr. Oscar Romero was a half-wit succubus of decentralized Jesuits and Salvadoran communists."
Pope Francis has unwittingly renewed the urgent need to reform the exercise of the Pope's power, the Petrine primacy, the conception of his service to the Church as "servant of servants."
Pope Francis will be credited with sounding the death knell for the future of the Church and for the coming Conclave.
Pope Francis in these almost eleven years of pontificate has made many mistakes, as all popes do, but a specific way of being of his has mired him in very serious errors such as lack of transparency, authoritarian opacity and a casual relationship with the truth.
The next Bishop of Rome should be, a man of law; a pastor capable of reading the world and the whole of humanity - and his time - with categories of religious and spiritual thought; a thinker capable of sifting, with faith, through socio-economic and political-geostrategic realities and challenges -- and not the other way around.
