The Dictator Pope

The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy

Marcantonio Colonna

• Publisher: Regnery
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781621578338
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Conservatism & Liberalism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Marcantonio Colonna's The Dictator Pope has rocked Rome and the entire Catholic Church with its portrait of an authoritarian, manipulative, and politically partisan pontiff. Occupying a privileged perch in Rome during the tumultuous first years of Francis's pontificate, Colonna was privy to the shock, dismay, and even panic that the reckless new pope engendered in the Church's most loyal and judicious leaders. The Dictator Pope discloses that Father Mario Bergoglio (the future Pope Francis) was so unsuited for ecclesiastical leadership that the head of his own Jesuit order tried to prevent his appointment as a bishop in Argentina. Behind the benign smile of the "people's pope" Colonna reveals a ruthless autocrat aggressively asserting the powers of the papacy in pursuit of a radical agenda.

Chapter 1

THE ST. GALLEN MAFIA

The Pope of Surprises

If you speak to the Catholics of Buenos Aires, they will tell you of the miraculous change that has taken over Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Their dour, unsmiling archbishop was turned overnight into the smiling, jolly Pope Francis, the idol of the people with whom he so fully identifies. If you speak to anyone working in the Vatican, they will tell you about the miracle in reverse. When the publicity cameras are off him, Pope Francis turns into a different figure: arrogant, dismissive of people, prodigal with bad language, and notorious for furious outbursts of temper which are known to everyone from the cardinals to the chauffeurs.

As Pope Francis said himself on the evening of his election, the cardinals in the Conclave of March 2013 seemed to have decided to go “to the ends of the Earth” to choose their pope, but the realization is now dawning that they had not troubled to check their merchandise. At first, he seemed a breath of fresh air, his rejections of convention being the signs of a man who was going to bring bold, radical reform into the Church. After five years of his pontificate, it is becoming increasingly clear that the reform is not being delivered. Instead, what we have is a revolution in personal style, but a revolution which is not a happy one for what Catholics consider the most sacred office on Earth. Conservative Catholics are worried at the changes in moral teaching that Francis seems to be introducing, while liberals are dissatisfied because those changes are vaguely expressed and do not go far enough. Over and above such fears, however, are faults that ought to move all Catholics concerned for the integrity of the Church and the papal office. After five years of his pontificate, Francis is showing that he is not the democratic, liberal ruler that the cardinals thought they were electing in 2103, but a papal tyrant the like of whom has not been seen for many centuries. Shocking as the accusation may be, it is backed up by incontrovertible evidence. This book traces the failed reforms which have falsified the hopes that were placed in Francis, and describes in detail the reign of fear in the Vatican which the pope from Argentina has introduced.

After five years of Pope Francis Bergoglio, it is being said with more frequency, and more openly, that the strange situation in today’s Vatican resembles nothing less than a Dan Brown potboiler novel, complete with conspiracies of eminent churchmen, sexual and financial scandals, and shady international banking interests. While many look hopefully to Pope Francis to relax the Church’s traditional doctrines and practices, there has been surprisingly little attention paid to a remark by one of the highest ranking and most powerful prelates in the western world, that he was elected by a liberal “mafia,” a group of progressive bishops and cardinals who had worked for years to bring about exactly this end.

Far from being an accusation from Church conservatives, the term was first used in a television interview¹ in September 2015 by Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the retired but still hugely influential archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels. Danneels said that he had for years been part of this group that had opposed Pope Benedict XVI throughout his reign. The group had, he said, worked to bring about a “much more modern” Catholic Church, and the election of the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as pope. An examination of the background of these extraordinary comments can give an insight into the nature of current ecclesiastical politics, particularly in liberal European episcopal circles.

“The St. Gallen group is sort of a posh name,” Danneels said, to appreciative laughs from a live audience. “But in reality we called ourselves and that group: ‘the mafia.’” The cardinal was speaking on a Belgian television program. In the brief video uploaded to the internet containing Danneels’s remarks, a voice-over summarized the nature of the group that “met every year since 1996” in St. Gallen, Switzerland, originally at the invitation of the town’s bishop, Ivo Fürer, and the famous Italian Jesuit and academic, and archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini.

“Together they organised the secret ‘resistance’ against Cardinal Ratzinger, who at that time was the right-hand man of John Paul II,” as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“When Pope John Paul II died in 2005, the group already pushed the present pope [Francis] to the fore,” though this first attempt failed to put Jorge Mario Bergoglio on the throne. When faced with the election of Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, “Danneels could hardly hide his disappointment,” the narrator says.

Danneels gave the interview to promote his authorized biography, and added that the St. Gallen Group had bishops and cardinals, “too many to name.” But all of them held the same general aim: the implementation of a “liberal/progressivist” agenda, and opposition to Pope Benedict and the direction of moderate doctrinal conservatism. Although later it was denied that the group was secret, Danneels said, “Things were discussed very freely; no reports were made so that everyone could blow off steam.”

The program interviewed one of Danneels’s biographers, Jürgen Mettepenningen (who co-authored the authorized biography with Karim Schelkens), saying that by 2013, with the resignation of Benedict, “You can say that through his participation in that group, Cardinal Danneels has been one of those who were the pioneers of the choice of Pope Francis.”

The authors of the Danneels biography listed the group’s concerns as “the situation of the Church,” the “primacy of the Pope,” “collegiality,” and “John Paul II’s succession.” English Vaticanist Edward Pentin writes that they “also discussed centralism in the Church, the function of bishops’ conferences, development of the priesthood, sexual morality, [and] the appointment of bishops,” a schema more or less identical to the one that was to come into public view at the two Synods on the Family convened by Pope Francis in 2014 and 2015.

As one of the most powerful Catholic prelates in Europe and one of the leading voices in the dominant liberal camp of the European episcopate, Danneels’s biography was of great public interest. Lest it be imagined that the cardinal was joking, the existence and general purpose of the St. Gallen “mafia” was confirmed the next day by biographer Karim Schelkens in an interview with a local St. Gallen radio station.² Edward Pentin summarized what was known about the group, writing in the National Catholic Register: “The personalities and theological ideas of the members sometimes differed, but one thing united them: their dislike of the then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.” Pentin continued, “The group wanted a drastic reform of the Church, much more modern and current, with Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis, as its head. They got what they wanted.” Pentin added in a later article that although the St. Gallen Group officially ceased meeting in 2006, there can be no doubt that its influence continued into 2013. “It’s safe to say that it helped form a network that paved the way for at least favoring Cardinal Bergoglio at the Conclave seven years later.”³

In 2015,⁴ the German author and Vatican expert Paul Badde confirmed this, saying⁵ that he had received “reliable information” that three days after the burial of Pope John Paul II, Cardinals Martini, Lehmann, and Kasper from Germany, Backis from Lithuania, van Luyn from the Netherlands, Danneels from Brussels, and Murphy-O’Connor from London “met in the so-called Villa Nazareth in Rome, the home of Cardinal Silvestrini who was then no longer eligible to vote; they then discussed in secret a tactic of how to avoid the election of Joseph Ratzinger.”

Following the revelations by Danneels, a somewhat confused letter⁶ appeared from the diocese of St. Gallen that partially retracted the claim that the group had influenced the resignation of Pope Benedict. The letter did confirm that the election of Jorge Bergoglio as Pope Francis in 2013 “corresponded to the goal pursued in St. Gallen,” noting that this information came from Cardinal Danneels’s biography. “This is confirmed by Bishop Ivo Fürer,” the letter continued, who said that his “joy at the choice of the Argentinian was never made a secret.”

Danneels’s biography says that the group started forming well before 1996. In 1982, Danneels attended meetings of the Council of the European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) for the first time and met Martini and Ivo Fürer, who is described as “the zealous and discreet secretary of CCEE.” Martini took the reins of the CCEE in 1987; his leadership was decidedly in the liberal direction, and by 1993 Pope John Paul II had decided that the group’s secretary was to be a bishop appointed by Rome, that Curial prelates should attend the meetings, and that the venue should be moved to Rome.

In 1993 the pope transferred CCEE presidency from Martini’s hands into those of Miloslav Vlk, the archbishop of Prague. It is possible this was prompted by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the desirability of involving Eastern European bishops. Vlk would have been unlikely to be interested in the type of reform dear to the hearts of Martini and Hume.

These changes hampered the CCEE as a vehicle for liberal pressure on the Church and it was from this period that Danneels disengaged himself from it. The St. Gallen Group began meeting in 1996 at the invitation of Ivo Fürer—who had been appointed bishop of St. Gallen in 1995—three years after this change of management.

Later, the two Danneels biographers partly retracted their description of the St. Gallen Group as a liberal “lobby” group. But even so the same ambiguity could be detected as in the letter from the St. Gallen diocese which they quoted in their statements. Pentin reported⁷ on September 26, 2015, that the biographers repeated the official letter from the diocese, saying the “election of Bergoglio corresponded with the aims of St. Gallen; on that there is no doubt. And the outline of its programme was that of Danneels and his confreres who had been discussing it for ten years.” They said the failure to elect Bergoglio in 2005 led to the disbanding of the group. Pentin points out, however, that some of St. Gallen’s members or their close associates were later named by the English papal biographer Austen Ivereigh, as part of “Team Bergoglio,” the group of cardinals who finally brought the St. Gallen plan to fruition at the Conclave of 2013.

The prelates in the group had been most concerned with preventing Ratzinger’s election at the Conclave in 2005. But more generally it is not difficult to determine from examining their careers in which direction the members of the St. Gallen “mafia” hoped to steer the Church. The idea was simple; to gather these powerful, like-minded prelates together to use their vast networks of contacts to bring about what political analysts would recognize as “regime change.”

The program they were advancing was couched in the watchwords of “decentralization,” “collegiality,” and a more “pastoral” Church. By the last term they meant that they wanted to get away from the firm upholding of Catholic moral teaching that had characterized Pope John Paul II and move towards the approach that has since been seen in the Synod on the Family.⁸ The slogans of decentralization and collegiality are also an implicit criticism of John Paul II and of the way he governed the Church. John Paul came to the throne after the fifteen-year reign of Paul VI, in whose time the radical consequences of the Second Vatican Council were worked out. Whether Paul VI’s liberal interpretation of the Council was the right one is nowadays a subject of controversy (it has been challenged by the “Hermeneutic of Continuity” argued by Benedict XVI); but what cannot be disputed was that the results of Paul VI’s government were in some areas unfortunate. Nearly fifty thousand priests abandoned the priesthood during these years, vocations to the religious life in general, among both men and women, suffered a collapse of similar scale, and there was a widespread rejection of Church teaching—not least of Paul VI’s own encyclical Humanae vitae.

The phenomenon was accentuated by Paul VI’s appointments to the episcopate. To take one example from the United States, the hierarchy there was transformed by the nominations made by the nuncio Archbishop Jadot, who in a brief seven years (1973–1980) managed to appoint 103 bishops and promote fifteen archbishops. Among the latter, nominees who proved especially scandalous included Archbishop Hunthausen of Seattle, whose management later provoked Vatican intervention and the imposition of a coadjutor, and above all Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee, who eventually resigned after he had paid $450,000 from diocesan funds to a male lover who was threatening him with a lawsuit. Such consequences of advancing “liberal” pastors were felt in greater or lesser degree in many sectors of the worldwide Church.

John Paul II came to the papal throne with a determination to stop the rot, and to a large extent he succeeded, but he left many discontents among those who were of Paul VI’s school. Since John Paul could often not rely on the hierarchy he had been bequeathed, he followed a policy of greater papal control as the only viable option to restore orthodox teaching and Catholic religious life. Undoubtedly, he tightened up Church discipline, but whether he can fairly be called a “centralizer,” who was not “collegial” in spirit, is open to question. John Paul II’s centralism, against which the prelates of the St. Gallen Group professed to be reacting, was a response to a state of chaos which had come in by equally centralist means. It would be naïve not to recognize that the slogans of decentralization and collegiality used by the Group were code words for a broad liberal program, which needs to be described.

Those who have watched the Catholic scene over the last thirty years would readily recognize the names of the leading figures of the St. Gallen Group. Among those listed by Pentin, the most famous are Danneels, with the bible scholar and papabile archbishop of Milan Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, and the German theologian Cardinal Walter Kasper.

Martini

The most illustrious of the St. Gallen names and its indisputable leader was Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, for most of the years of both John Paul II and Benedict XVI considered the leading figure of the Church’s liberal faction. A reading of Martini’s interviews and writings gives a hint as to Bergoglio’s enthusiasm for his declared mentor; many of the cardinal’s favorite terms and phrases reappear i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chapter 1: The St. Gallen Mafia
• Chapter 2: The Cardinal from Argentina
• Chapter 3: Reform? What Reform?
• Chapter 4: Beating a New (Crooked) Path
• Chapter 5: Mercy! Mercy!
• Chapter 6: Kremlin Santa Marta
• Notes
• Index