Marco Tosatti: Does Pope Francis think that his Pontificate is about to come to an end?

December 8, 2019

The appointment of Tagle as Prefect for Propaganda Fide is an important signal for many reasons. But most of all because it gives grounds to suppose that Pope Bergoglio believes the end of his pontificate is nigh. An intuition, obviously; nonetheless, justifiable, if you consider another decision  taken - for no apparent reason - some weeks ago. 

We are referring here to  the end of Fabiàn Pedacchio’s service as special Secretary to the Pontiff over the last six years; a position commenced shortly after the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio on March 13, 2013. Fabián Pedacchio, all this time, has maintained his position in the Congregation for Bishops,  acting in support of his very close friend, Ilson de Jesùs Montanari, appointed by Pope Francis as Secretary of that same Congregation, resulting in an absolutely extraordinary leap in career; he divested de facto the Prefect, Marc Ouellet, by being, repeatedly, the leading voice in the choosing of bishops. 

Tosatti - The two responses to the ‘Correction’: Belittle, label, marginalize and the Pope’s unacceptable silence

Marco Tosatti

Stilum Curiae

September 25, 2017

Primum, denigrate. Saddle the adversary with a label, which will in any case place him in difficulty regarding public opinion as well as put him on the defensive. It is a rhetoric device as old as the world itself and with which the Church is well-acquainted. Thus, faced with an undoubtedly exceptional and exceptionally agonizing event, such as Correctio filialis, signed – at the present moment  - by 62 personalities in the Catholic world, both laity and priests (cardinals and bishops, we are told, have been voluntarily excluded) we have two reactions. The first, on the part of those directly concerned, which we will return to, is:  silence.

The second, by his strongmen, of  pen or computer, or the TV, if you prefer, is to: belittle, label in a way as to marginalize, make it understood that they are a poor lot, and (horror of horrors!) right-wing; after all, didn’t Monsignor Fellay the Superior of the Lefebvrians sign ? Another reaction: let’s pray for them, the poor things, who dare to say that the pope can write erroneous things! It’s not possible: it’s the pope himself that defines who is a heretic! How could he write erroneous things? Let’s leave it to those who know more than we do to confute this thesis, which seems to attribute to the pope, always and everywhere,  prerogatives which he doesn’t have and which no-one has ever claimed.  We note in the articles of criticism, more or less veiled, an element which is rigorously missing: the evaluation whether what is said in the formal correction makes sense or doesn’t.

For the record: Francis first, always

We bring you, dear readers, this disturbing but not surprising anecdote simply to record it forever on this blog. But let's be honest: This pontificate, since the beginning, has put itself before Christ, before His Church's tradition, before His inerrant Word and, now, before His Mass. 

From the great Marco Tosatti, via First Things:

The first step of Müller’s Calvary was a disconcerting episode in the middle of 2013. The cardinal was celebrating Mass in the church attached to the congregation palace, for a group of German students and scholars. His secretary joined him at the altar: “The pope wants to speak to you.” “Did you tell him I am celebrating Mass?” asked Müller. “Yes,” said the secretary, “but he says he does not mind—he wants to talk to you all the same.” The cardinal went to the sacristy. The pope, in a very bad mood, gave him some orders and a dossier concerning one of his friends, a cardinal. (This is a very delicate matter. I have sought an explanation of this incident from the official channels. Until the explanation comes, if it ever comes, I cannot give further details.) Obviously, Mūller was flabbergasted.

Poor "Heralds of the Gospel", close to Benedict XVI -- they are about to see what Francis' mercy looks like

Mass in the main church of the Heralds of the Gospel, near Sao Paulo, Brazil

The latest "Franciscan Intervention in a Conservative Religious Institute", revealed by Marco Tosatti, in Nuova Bussola:

The Congregation for Religious is to begin an apostolic visit regarding an international association of faithful, the Heralds of the Hospel, the first born in the Third Millenium, and that has had an enormous growth in the past few years. According to confidential internal sources of the Congregation, presided by Brazilian Cardinal Joao Braz de Avis, and whose Secretary is Spanish Franciscan Jose Rodriguez Carballo, the formation of a commission composed by a bishop, a sister, and a canon lawyer to inquire into the Heralds of the Gospel is imminent. The motivations for this initiative are unknown. The founder [of the Heralds] is Monsignor Joao Scogamiglio Cla Dias; and the fact that he is an admirer of Plinio Correa de Oliveira, the great figure of Brazilian Traditional Catholicism, who died in 1995, is already a reason for suspicion for the current Vatican administration. [Source, in Italian]

First, we must make two observations. 

Ratzinger to Fumone. Burke to Campo De' Fiori. Someone is 'getting bent out of shape'

By Marco Tosatti

May 20, 2017

Reading three news articles yesterday makes me think that someone is really “getting bent out of shape” and we are entering now a perilous phase of decline: those who don’t agree with the boss – off with their heads! An unprecedented populist degeneration in the life of the modern Church. I sincerely hope I’m wrong: I’m not just saying this, I really hope so. However we have signs that are anything but comforting.

The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is once again the Pope’s non-response (a year has now gone by) to the five questions asked by the four Cardinals on the controversial points of the Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. Questions made in a spirit of obedience, following the classical procedure of the Church, i.e. asking the Pontiff and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for a clarification. Two months after the questions had been made, when the Cardinals discovered that the Pontiff had no intention of responding, they made the questions public. These regard everyone and in substance can be reduced to one only: is it licit, in mortal sin and with no change to one’s life habits, to receive Holy Communion?

We don’t know the reason for the Pope’s non-response. We seem to recall that a certain Jesuit close to him had said that the reason was the fact that the questions were of an ideological nature. Forgive me, but this sounds a bit weak. It is the task of authorities to clarify their thoughts: and in doing so it will make clear whether a question is useless or has some point.  In the Church, especially, is an authority which doesn’t respond fulfilling its duties?

Tosatti: Is the Vatican commending abortion?

Marco Tosatti 

La Stampa

June 11, 2016

Is the Vatican commending abortion and contraception? It’s a legitimate question after the representative of the Holy See’s intervention at the U. N.’s World Health Assembly [in Geneva] where some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed at ensuring “healthy lives” are [normally] approved.

Now, one of the objectives included in the commendation, in particular objective 3.7 asks for: “universal access to sexual and reproductive health services.” At the Cairo Conference in 1994, the United Nations clarified what these terms meant: to provide women with the instruments of “modern contraception” and “family planning” with recourse to “safe abortion wherever it is permitted by law.”  

Benedict does not go along and deletes …

                                      

                                                                                                                                          Marco Tosatti

[Senior Religion Correspondent for Italian Daily] La Stampa

November 19, 2014

 

In Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s complete works, an article from 1972 by the  young theologian Father Ratzinger, has been published minus a passage referring to the possibility of Communion for the divorced and remarried.

This deletion is interesting since that passage has been quoted frequently by Cardinal Walter Kasper, who, as was noted at the Synod, is a an enthusiastic advocate of the divorced and remarried being admitted to  the Eucharist.

According to the Irish Times, Father Vincent Twomey (a theologian, who studied under Professor Ratzinger) is of the opinion that the editorial modification is important; the theologian suggests that Pope Emeritus does not want his ideas as a young theologian, never repeated as Prefect for the Congregation of Faith nor as Pope, being manipulated.

In the original text of 1972, the then Father Joseph Ratzinger, wrote that marriage was indissoluble in the eyes of the Catholic Church.  However, if “a second marriage showed evidence of having taken on a moral and ethical dimension and 'lived in the spirit of faith' with 'moral obligations' to the wife and children, then an opening toward [reception] of the Eucharist, after a period of probation, 'seems to be nothing more than fair and completely in keeping with the Church’s line of tradition.'”

According to Twomey, the omission “is an important attempt” on the part of Benedict to make sure that his words, written in another context, will not be used against him.

[Source, in Italian. Translation: contributor Francesca Romana]

"Synod Fathers under intense pressure from the Kasper Front to modify their views - or else"

It seems Walter Kasper's racist remarks on Africa and Africans have caused an understandable shock wave throughout the assembly. They reflect a racist, xenophobic, and anti-African mindset that has removed the Church in Africa from any participation in the Synodal administration and governance, or in the committee formed to help draft the final relatio.

Other than that, Synod Fathers are being strongly pressured by the allies of the racist German cardinal, who are in the minority, to modify as little as possible the partial relatio: as Tosatti explains below, that was one of the main reasons why the racist manipulators did not want the addresses of the first week made public, they can now pressure the more fearful bishops to take 180-degree turns on what they said, and they can do it without losing face. Tosatti is too gentle to say exactly what kind of pressure is being applied, but we can be sure that, as they always do, the "Progressive Legion" have no scruples whatsoever in accomplishing what they deem necessary: they not only offer compensations to those who are weak for career "promotions", but they threaten, they blackmail, they shame, they lie, they deceive, they discriminate, they set continent against continent, nation against nation, cardinal against cardinal, bishop against bishop, they will go to the utmost consequences (even those we may consider absolutely unthinkable, and those we cannot even imagine) -- they are capable of absolutely anything, as long as they manage to accomplish their end: the birth of their "New Church of Worldliness".

Synod, time for pressure

MARCO TOSATTI

[Senior Religious daily for Italian daily] La Stampa

October 16, 2014

"The Counterfeit Synod" There's a problem with it. - A Devastating Critique of a Sick Assembly

A Synod that's kind of a counterfeit?

While it is true that the Church is not a democracy, and that one cannot go forward by majority coups, the faithful as a whole cannot be subjected to theological and doctrinal mini-coups. Just as nature, the Church does not appreciate leaps.

Marco Tosatti

[Senior Religious Analyst for Italian daily] La Stampa

October 15, 2014

When the rapporteur - a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church - ignores more or less explicitly the fatherhood of a report that has his signature on it, then there's a problem

CENSORSHIP IN THE SECRET SYNOD - Press Office manipulation hiding significant pro-family, pro-marriage and anti-Kasper pronouncements

The Synod: Müller Against Censorship

The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, voiced his disagreement with the censorship imposed on the speeches from participants at the Synod. A bishop: Kasper’s proposal is a medicine that is worse than the disease.

Marco Tosatti

LA STAMPA

October 10, 2014

"Synod: Most Are Against Kasper"

Marco Tosatti

[Senior Religious correspondent for Italian daily] La Stampa

October 9, 2014

The decision to not publish the texts of the speeches of those participating in the Synod on the Family is certainly not having a positive effect on clarity of information, and is contributing to a situation that is, so to speak, mystifying.  The general public, including both Catholics and non-Catholics., are not being informed in a clear and thorough way. All we can say is that after the first three days, in which more than one hundred speeches have been made, a picture of what is going on appears anything but clear.

The Synod Will Be a Farce - if the Kasper Legion's Attempt to Muzzle It Goes According To Plan

"With Annoying Paragraph 1650 Removed !"

EXPLOSIVE - The Pianist: "How I Plan to Manipulate the Synod At Will" One of our most important translations

Caudillismo - Tosatti: Bishops who Agree to Incardinate Friars who Want to Leave the Franciscans of the Immaculate Blacklisted?

The great Caudillos of Argentine history are celebrated by Argentine composers 
Ariel Ramírez and Felix Luna (famous for their Misa Criolla) in this 1966 album

Tosatti: "De-Ratzingerization" purge moving full steam ahead - If you're too "conservative", get out of the Roman Curia!

De-Ratzingerization underway

Marco Tosatti

[Senior Religion Correspondent for Italian Daily] La Stampa

September 15, 2014

The Cost of Frugal Living

"The Pope, Square Meters, and Demagoguery"*

Mario Tosatti

Senior Religious Correspondent for La Stampa

Let’s face it: if there is a king, the court cannot be suppressed. Even if he is a king like Pope Francis who says he doesn’t want any signs of regality. Still, the court exists (and how!), even if we will avoid naming names, at least on this occasion. On which we wish to discuss demagoguery and square meters.

A hallway - ground floor of Casa Santa Marta

Journalist pleads: "Can we please stop blaming journalists?" The case of Italian Bishop Nunzio Galantino

No "expressionless faces" from these pro-abortion activists !
Sorry, Bishop Galantino prefers to call it "interruption of pregnancy".

Bishop Nunzio Galantino, new Secretary-General and most powerful man of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), gained instant worldwide fame in May when criticizing the "expressionless faces" of Catholics praying the rosary in front of abortion clinics. By ridiculing their faces, with which he does not "identify himself," he humiliates all those people who risk life, limb, liberty, and fortune for the simple "crime" of praying the rosary in front of the greatest symbols of degeneracy of our crumbling remains of civilization, the slaughterhouses of human beings known as "abortion clinics." Not that Bishop Galantino, first mentioned by us weeks ago, was ever found in front of an abortion mill, not at all. Now, in what one might call an exercise in the "intellectual acrobatics of shamelessness," he says he did not say what he indeed said. He offended millions of faithful Catholics, and now he claims he was offended! The gall! 

Thankfully, there are more and more boys calling attention to the nakedness of some of our new emperor-bishops - and one of them is none other than one of Italy's most respected religious journalists, Marco Tosatti, senior religious correspondent for major Italian daily La Stampa. Yes, even Italian journalists are getting pretty tired of journalists always getting the blame.

______________________________________

Galantino: patches and holes.
The old game “it’s always the fault of the journalists” doesn’t work sometimes. 
 And some cures are worse than the disease...

MARCO TOSATTI
July 21, 2014

Galantino, patches and holes. I am in a place where the connections to Internet are fleeting and discontinuous, and so I am only now seeing the news that Zenit reports an interview given by Secretary-General of the CEI, Bp. Nunzio Galantino, to monthly “Sempre”.

Bp. Galantino responds to the criticisms directed at him. “An aggression which in reality, hurt me a bit.” The reference, writes Zenit, is to the controversy following his statements when he sustained that he couldn’t identify, “with the expressionless faces reciting the Rosary outside [abortion] clinics.”

Who is giving the numbers to the Pope?

Marco Tosatti 
senior religious correspondent for La Stampa

It is difficult to write about something that is vague and has indistinct contours as in an interview with seeming contradictions, but not contradictory in a general sense, such as the latest interview between Eugenio Scalfari and the Pope.  But there is an aspect of the conversation that merits attention, because it poses questions of great weight.   One of these questions concerns sexual abuse by clerics.  At a certain point, in his reconstruction of the conversation, Scalfari writes that he asked how widespread this phenomenon is. The Pope responded, according to Scalfari, in this way:

“Many of my consultants who are in this struggle with me assure me on the basis of reliable data that they estimate that pedophilia in the Church is at the level of two percent.  This should have reassured me, but I must say to you that it did not reassure me at all.  I consider it on the contrary a most grave matter.  The two percent of pedophiles are priests and even bishops and cardinals.  And others, even more numerous, know but are silent, they punish but say nothing about the reason for the punishment.  I find this state of things unsustainable, and it is my intention to confront it with the severity that it demands.

The sentence ends this way, without the closing quotations marks.

But it is the figure of two percent reported by Scalfari that creates a great deal of perplexity.  And one must ask: a) if the Pope really said that; b) who gave him these figures? c) did Scalfari report this correctly? There are 410,000 priests in the world.  Two percent of these comes to eight thousand.  This is data that contrasts with that which has been accepted heretofore.

Influential Italian Vaticanist, bewildered, reaches shocking conclusion: "In the Catholic Church, it's now Open Season on Conservatives"

That is the title of the most recent post of the most experienced, and of the most influential, Vaticanists in Italy -- Marco Tosatti, the senior religion writer for La Stampa.

Church: Open Season on Conservatives

25/06/2014

MARCO TOSATTI

We hope to be mistaken, as it often happens, fortunately; but the impression we have from a series of small signs is that, in reality, the Church of Pope Francis has opened hunting [season] on "conservatives"; a word that, as always in such cases, is sufficiently generic to be used against a wide range of persons.

The most striking case remains that of the Franciscans of the Immaculate, an order intervened by [higher] authority with extremely harsh procedures, and without clear motives ever having been given, except a generic indictment of a Traditionalist drift.

I confess that, before their decapitation, the Franciscans of the Immaculate did not have a position of any relevance in my life; good Catholics, people -- certainly not traditionalists -- linked to the Church now speak well of them to me; others signal certain eccentricities, or excessive personalisms of the founder (but how many order founders, ancient or recent, do not display these excesses?).

In short, in the absence of serious and weighty reasons, I must think that what happened was an internal war, fought out in the name of the Pope, with the cruelty that is typical of closed environments, and all that is related to the liturgy. Under the appearance of mercy. But in addition to the hallmark case of the Franciscans of the Immaculate, there is a proliferation of single cases, small and not so small things, that make one who is skilled in the ecclesiastical world ponder that a process has been set in motion, that is undeclared but no less effective for this reason. It is thought that the Pope does not like anything that is traditionalism, in particular in the liturgy; that, even if he officially defends the decisions of John Paul II and Benedict XVI in this field, choices that were clearly ones of openness to that world, deep down he has different sensibilities

Czech bishop Jan Graubner, speaking about the audience of past February 14, declared to Vatican Radio: "When we were discussing those who are fond of the ancient liturgy and wish to return to it, it was evident that the Pope speaks with great affection, attention, and sensitivity for all in order not to hurt anyone. However, he made a quite strong statement when he said that he understands when the old generation returns to what it experienced, but that he cannot understand the younger generation wishing to return to it. "When I search more thoroughly - the Pope said - I find that it is rather a kind of fashion [in Czech: 'móda']. And if it is a fashion, therefore it is a matter that does not need that much attention. It is just necessary to show some patience and kindness to people who are addicted to a certain fashion. But I consider greatly important to go deep into things, because if we do not go deep, no liturgical form, this or that one, can save us."

There could be some argument on this point. Also by observing which religious orders gather more favor among the young, from the point of view of vocations. But what matters to us only is to observe that perhaps those who ascribe to the Pope little fondness for that world are not mistaken. And, in the Curia, which is nevertheless always a Court, even if the Sovereign, instead of living in his Apartments, lives in the barracks of the King's Musketeers, there is great ability in sensing this atmosphere. And to act accordingly.

Therefore, there are reports of priests judged too conservative by their own orders to whom it was not granted to profess those particular vows typical of their own order; promotions -- and demotions -- in the dicasteries of the Curia, judged based on the "progressivism" or "conservatism" of those interested. Even reaching possible decisions at a much higher level, related to the relocation of Cardinals considered "conservative" to mid-level dioceses, instead of greater positions [lit. ad maiora].

One of the latest news comes from New York, where a South African priest, attaché to the Holy See’s Mission to the United Nations, deeply attached to the Mass according to the Ancient Rite (the Mass in the Extraordinary Form), delivered a sermon in which he underlined the need to have priests who had love and sensibility for the Ancient Rite. The homily appeared on the Internet. After which the priest was dismissed from all his Mass-celebrating obligations, and it seems he will soon return to South Africa.

Small things, but which when woven together form a fabric. The impression is that the work accomplished by Benedict XVI to give citizenship back to various sensibilities within the Church is about to be cancelled. What a shame! It was in fact Vittorio Messori, a long time ago, that the Catholic Church is based on the et-et [and-and: and the one, and the other], on the living together of Catholics who are diverse, but united, while the sects are the ones that practice the aut-aut [either-or: either the one, or the other]. Pope Bergoglio certainly does not want a Church of the aut-aut; but perhaps there is a problem of "Bergoglistas", by conviction or by opportunism, who think they will meet his favor.

______________________________

Rorate note: We emphasized above what is the essential conclusion: whatever may be the sensibilities of the Pope, what he or any other Pontiff will never be able to end is the spirit of Court life. The spirit of Court life is not related to monarchical or republican sensibilities (it is certainly much stronger in today's White House, for instance, than in the court of Saint Louis), to living in a palace or in a cupboard -- it is a general spirit related to knowing where power lies, and trying to meet the favor of the man in power, most often than not by being as crass as possible in the defense of what the Courtier thinks is his master's preference, whether or not it is so. And if the man in power is truly powerful and centers all major decisions in himself, then the adulation of his Courtiers, and their decisions to meet his favor, become more and more extreme. It falls upon the Sovereign to see that a balance is found -- what is true, in any event, is that, at no moment in the past 60 years, or even earlier in the past century, has there been a greater truly Court-like atmosphere in the Vatican, even if it is a "Progressive" Court. Because the Court spirit that matters for history is not that of marbles, jewelry, apartments, draperies, tapestries and...butlers, but that of power, misguided flattery, strong decisions, rancor, and tragic overreaching. (Why, we are now reaching the 100th anniversary of a conflict that could have been avoided if these Court-like characteristics had been toned down by more cautious Sovereigns.)

[Source: Marco Tosatti in La Stampa - in Italian. On update of Holy See spokesman's declaration on pope's meeting with the Franciscans of the Immaculate, please see our post here.]