Special Guest-Post: "Behind the Scenes: How Francis Personally Picked Cupich for Chicago" by Don Pio Pace

We are very honored to post this third guest-post by a very wise, knowledgeable, and highly influential cleric, writing under the pen name of don Pio Pace.

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A Highly Troubling Sign: How Cupich was Chosen for Chicago

a guest-post by Fr. Pio Pace

It is very necessary to understand the full measure of the nomination of the extreme liberal bishop Blase Cupich to the see of Chicago, replacing Cardinal Francis George.

Cupich's promotion to this particularly important position, that usually entails the elevation to the cardinalatial red, was a personal decision of Pope Francis himself. More precisely, the Pope imposed his candidate on Cardinal Ouellet and the Congregation for Bishops, under the desperate suggestion of the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Abp. Carlo Maria Viganò. We know well that those men who are particularly authoritarian, such as Francis, also are, in many cases, easily manipulated by those who learn how to read them. Moreover, it is enough to waggle before the eyes of the Pope the scarecrow called Cardinal Burke to lead him in one direction or another, because he has kept against the Prefect of the Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura an extremely strong rancor after the 2013 conclave, in which the American Cardinal was one of those who tried to thwart his path to the pontificate.

We know what that possibly means, right?...

The Holy Father received in audience this morning, in the office of the Paul VI Hall: -H.E. Bp. Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Bishop of Regensburg (Federal Republic of Germany).

Yes, we know what that separate audience possibly means.

And perhaps our Brazilian readers could tell us in the comments what influence the newly-appointed Secretary of the Congregation for Bishops, Abp. Lorenzo Baldisseri, had in the formation of their current episcopate: he has spent almost ten years as Apostolic Nuncio to Brazil and that is enough time to shape a national episcopate according to the Nuncio's own image.

P.S. As we noted yesterday, "several Italian sources" mention "the possible nomination of Cardinal Amato, current Prefect of Saints and former Secretary of CDF as the more probable replacement of Cardinal Levada as Prefect of CDF." Place your bets.

Do you have what it takes to rule over one million Catholics?

Vatican Information Service, on Nov. 25, 2011:

VATICAN CITY, 25 NOV 2011 (VIS) - The Holy Father: 

 - Appointed Bishop Juan Vicente Cordoba Villota S.J., auxiliary of Bucaramanga, Colombia, as bishop of Fontibon (area 80, population 1,536,000, Catholics 1,228,000, priests 84, permanent deacons 20, religious 178), Colombia. He succeeds Bishop Enrique Sarmiento Angulo, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit.

IF this is true, one cannot help but think...

...that a bit of research on the Internet might actually have averted this appointment.

From Sandro Magister's latest column: The school of Bologna gets its own Cardinal.

But let's get back to Archbishop Tagle, who, as soon as he was appointed to Manila, was immediately honored with the title of "new papal contender" by vaticanista John L. Allen of the progressive American weekly "National Catholic Reporter."

It was Allen himself who emphasized how Tagle, after being a student of the theologian Joseph Komonchak of the Catholic University of America, joined the team of scholars put to work by Alberto Melloni and his mentor, Giuseppe Alberigo – both disciples and successors of Fr. Giuseppe Dossetti – on their controversial history of the Council. In the fourth volume of this history, published in 1999 and dedicated to the turbulent conciliar period of the autumn of 1964, it is Tagle who signs the key chapter, the one dedicated to the "storm in November: the black week."