Announcing Fr. Charles Murr’s new book of memoirs, Murder in the 33rd Degree: The Gagnon Investigation into Vatican & Freemasonry

In Catholic discourse today, one notices two extremes when the question of Freemasonry and its (past or present) penetration into the Church hierarchy is raised.

MAJOR EXPOSÉ: Rooms broken into, dossiers stolen, death threats, armed guards, assassinations... Fr. Charles Murr on Vatican intrigues surrounding Cardinals Baggio, Benelli, Villot, and Gagnon

Rorate readers will be aware of the groundbreaking interview Kevin J. Symonds conducted with Fr. Murr for the October 2020 issue of Inside the Vatican, which was also published at Rorate on October 10. Interested readers may want to read that interview first in order to gain more understanding of context for the present one, which was done once again for Inside the Vatican. In the previous interview, Fr. Murr told us about his friendship with Mother Pascalina Lehnert, the “right hand” of Pope Pius XII for several decades. In addition to this discussion, Fr. Murr made some notable revelations about what was going on at the Vatican in the 1960s, and 1970s. The interview below follows up on these revelations with the theme of “where do we go from here?”

Cardinal Baggi (L) and Cardinal Benelli (R)

“BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM”:

KEVIN SYMONDS’ SECOND INTERVIEW WITH FR. CHARLES MURR

ITV: Thank you, Fr. Murr, for sitting down again with Inside the Vatican. In our previous interview, you spoke of your association with Cardinal Edouard Gagnon and Msgr. Mario Marini. These two men worked closely with the Sostituto of the Secretariat of State, Cardinal Benelli. You yourself, however, did not enjoy the same association with Cardinal Benelli...

I was twenty-four years-old when I met and became friends with the newly appointed minutante in the Vatican Secretariat of State, Monsignor Mario Marini. Soon after, Marini introduced me to another extraordinary man who would play a major role in my life, his good friend, Archbishop Edouard Gagnon (1918–2007). Gagnon and Marini were respected friends and confidants of Archbishop Giovanni Benelli (Sostituto of the Secretary of State); I was not part of that inner circle. I knew Benelli, of course, and spoke with him many times, but I knew my place. Once, on Lago di Bracciano I was at table with him and Monsignors [Guillermo] Zanoni and Marini. I remember talking as little as possible. With Benelli, I knew my place and kept it.

Why did you think of your relationship with Benelli in this way?

To begin with, Giovanni Benelli was Giovanni Benelli! He was one of the most powerful men on earth; brilliant, a strategizer and deal-maker par excellence, the #1 Vatican diplomat, a man on familiar terms with popes and princes, patriarchs and presidents, world leaders of all sorts. I, on the other hand, was a greenhorn American student of philosophy; absolutely no one of consequence. Those special times that I was privileged to be in Benelli’s company were times I knew I was in the presence of greatness.

EXPOSÉ: New Interview with Fr. Charles Murr on Mother Pascalina, Bugnini, Paul VI, and Other Major Figures

Preliminary Note: For decades, traditionalists have suspected or accused Annibale Bugnini of being a Freemason, based essentially on hearsay and circumstantial evidence. The matter remained doubtful to such an extent that the eminent French historian Yves Chiron, himself a traditionalist, was unable to credit the rumor, judging the evidence inadequate and inconclusive. The situation began to change last May when Kevin Symonds presented credible details, courtesy of Fr. Brian Harrison, naming Cardinal Dino Staffa as the one who brought Paul VI the "smoking gun" information on Bugnini, which precipitated the latter's sudden fall from grace. 

It is therefore of major significance that more and better evidence — in the form of an interview conducted by Kevin Symonds with Fr. Charles Theodore Murr, author of The Godmother: Mother Pascalina: A Feminine Tour de Force (2017) — has now appeared that independently confirms the same sequence of events. With such confirmatory proofs, it is fair to say that there is no longer any reasonable doubt that the moving force in the Consilium was, indeed, a Freemason. 

BOMBSHELL: New historical evidence emerges in support of Bugnini’s association with Freemasonry — Names are named

The latest edition of the magazine of the Latin Mass Society of England & Wales, Mass of Ages, contains a review by Kevin Symonds of Taylor Marshall’s book Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within. (The review as published may be viewed in a PDF of the magazine, starting at page 40, as well as on the author’s personal website; it has been reproduced in full here.) 

Pursuing hints in the book, Symonds goes much beyond the conclusions of Marshall regarding Bugnini, having uncovered new material on Bugnini that decisively moves the question of his association with Freemasonry from the realm of shadowy speculation, where it remained even as recently as the scholarly biography by Yves Chiron, to the level of reasonable certainty. Instead of “unnamed sources,” where the matter was left by Michael Davies, we finally have named sources, with a plausible paper trail.

New Evidence on the Freemasonic Membership of Annibale Bugnini

Kevin Symonds

In this book, Taylor Marshall firmly maintains that the Catholic Church has been literally infiltrated by her enemies, thereby experiencing a massive campaign of disruption and distortion. A particular area in which Marshall advances this thesis pertains to the influence of the Vincentian priest, and later Archbishop, Annibale Bugnini (1912-1982) in the liturgical reforms of the mid-twentieth century. This review focuses on Marshall’s presentation of Bugnini’s influence upon these reforms and in particular of Marshall’s claim that Bugnini was involved with Freemasonry. It will be argued that, despite his eagerness to find evidence of ‘infiltration’ and his animus against Bugnini, Marshall actually misses some important evidence in favor of Bugnini’s membership of the Italian Freemasons.