Bergoglio's Revenge on Gänswein is Full of Inaccuracies. The defensive strategy of Bergoglio, Now Discovered to be Anti-pope , is Proving To Be Increasingly Clumsy In Recent Days.
Bergoglio's Revenge on Gänswein is Full of Inaccuracies. The defensive strategy of Bergoglio, Now Discovered to be Anti-pope , is Proving To Be Increasingly Clumsy In Recent Days.
In his book Bergoglio returns to the relations with his predecessor, against Ratzinger's secretary who had denied the "legend" of the harmony between the two Popes. He also says his opinion about the 2005 conclave, but it doesn't add up. ECCLESIA 03_04_2024
While calling for peace for the world, Francis opens new war fronts in the Church. He did so with the statements given to the Spanish journalist Javier Martinez-Brocal in the interview book El sucesor . In the previews released in these hours, the Pope gave his opinion on the relationship with Benedict XVI without sparing harsh criticism of Monsignor Georg Gänswein.
The fault of Ratzinger's most trusted private secretary is to have denied once and for all in his book Nothing but the truth the narrative of a harmonious cohabitation between the reigning Pontiff and his predecessor who retired to the Mater Ecclesiae monastery. Commenting on the contents of the volume co-written by Gänswein with the journalist Saverio Gaeta, Bergoglio on the one hand flaunted superiority by saying that "naturally it doesn't affect me, in the sense that it doesn't affect me", on the other hand he expressed all his anger because that book would have "turned him upside down, telling things that are not true".
Nothing but the truth revealed the background to Gänswein's dismissal in 2020 from the office of prefect of the Papal Household presumably for failing to prevent Benedict XVI from publishing a text defending the priesthood in the now famous From the Depths of the our heart (Cantagalli editore) written by Cardinal Robert Sarah shortly after the Synod on the Amazon. Gänswein said that Bergoglio did not listen to his predecessor's request to reinstate him as prefect of the Papal Household. The facts confirm that Gänswein, after the outbreak of the Sarah case, no longer returned to the side of the reigning Pope in public audiences although he formally maintained his position.
Still lashing out against the German archbishop , Francis told Martinez-Brocal that he "experienced the release of the previews of Nothing but the Truth as a lack of nobility and humanity" on the day of the funeral.
Beyond the criticism itself , it is useless to hide the shocked reaction to these words on the part of many who do not forget the attitude held by Bergoglio in the days of the exposition and funeral of his predecessor. Francis did not go to St. Peter's Basilica to pray before the body, he stubbornly confirmed the general audience on Wednesday in the Paul VI Hall despite the advice of cardinals and collaborators who barely managed to convince him to move the funeral by a few days to allow the cardinals from all over the world to arrive in Rome on time. Everyone then remembers the short and depersonalized homily as well as the Pope's hastiness during the funeral.
Beyond the judgment on the doctrinal and pastoral issues of the current pontificate , at that juncture emerged that character component that has often led Francis to make bitterly incomprehensible decisions in these eleven years. Gänswein's expulsion from the Vatican a month later, without any further assignment, closed the picture.
For some time, despite the evidence and at times the ridiculous , there are those who must have advised the Pope to present a very different narrative of his relationship with Ratzinger, distinguishing the latter from the "Ratzingerians" who would have used him against him. Even Monsignor Gänswein ended up in this circle, the man at his side until the end and who was his testamentary executor. In the book-interview El sucesor , this desire to present a report that is probably different from reality is perhaps at the origin of the interviewee's many contradictions. Francis did not hesitate to make public his account of the 2005 conclave.
The image of a Pope who begins to reveal details of the last two conclaves - one of his favorite topics with journalists and biographers - by virtue of his being legibus solutus is in itself not very reassuring. Even worse if these alleged revelations clash with existing information and statements previously made by him himself.
Bergoglio claimed to have been "used" by the cardinals who after the death of John Paul II wanted to block the election of the favorite Ratzinger and to have favored the latter by taking a step back after having collected 40 preferences. Based on the detailed report of the conclave of 19 years ago published in Limes by the Vatican correspondent Lucio Brunelli - an admirer of Bergoglio and one of the few to predict his election in 2013 - we know that the then Argentine cardinal actually collected 40 votes in the third round of voting. The Pope told Martinez-Brocal that "if they had continued to vote for me, [Ratzinger] would not have been able to reach the two-thirds needed to be elected pope." At that point, according to his version, the Argentine would have said to Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos: «Don't joke with my candidacy, because now I say that I won't accept, eh? Leave me here.' And there Benedict was elected." Therefore, according to the reigning Pontiff, his step backwards would have been decisive in breaking the impasse and leading to Ratzinger's election.
But this version raises more than one doubt . In fact, based on the diary of the anonymous cardinal published by Brunelli, it would seem that in the fourth vote the votes for Bergoglio were not zeroed, as an "announced" withdrawal of the candidate would have led one to imagine, but there was a drop to 26 preferences, with the the remaining ones go to the German favorite who thus became Pope. That the one around Bergoglio was a real candidacy already in 2005 and that his defeat was not the effect of a voluntary withdrawal seems to be demonstrated by the bitter comment of the Belgian cardinal, his supporter, Godfried Danneels to the Flemish newspaper De Morgen to whom he said that the conclave had «demonstrated that it was not yet the time for a Latin American pope». Furthermore, it seems truly unlikely that Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, one of the most conservative members of the entire college and then Benedict's right-hand man in the dialogue with the Society of Saint Pius
Another inaccuracy is that stated regarding the "two-thirds of the votes needed to be elected" which the German would not have reached if Bergoglio had not withdrawn. In reality, the apostolic constitution Universi Dominici Gregis in force since 1996 had sent the quorum of the two-thirds majority into retirement (later restored by Benedict in 2007): therefore, if the anti-Ratzinger supporters had resisted, his supporters would have been enough to carry on until the 34th ballot to have won with an absolute majority. The Pope is 87 years old and almost twenty years have passed since that conclave, so his memory may have played a cruel joke on him.
Another preview of the book El sucesor destined to spark discussion is that relating to the defense that Benedict XVI, now emeritus, would have made of his successor against some cardinals who would have complained to him about Bergoglian declarations on civil unions. These are the words of the Pope: «I had a very nice conversation with him when some cardinals went to meet him surprised by my words on marriage, and he was very clear with them, he helped them to distinguish things (...) like this he defended me." The reference is probably to the controversy that arose from a segment of an interview broadcast in a documentary by director Evgeny Afineevsky in which the Pope opened up to a law on civil unions. That of the elderly and now emeritus Benedict who agrees with his successor with the cardinals who visit him to complain to him almost seems like a topos that Francis has already used, for example on the return flight from Armenia responding to a question from journalist Elisabetta Piqué. The apostolic journey, however, dates back to 2016, therefore 4 years before the storm over the words in the documentary. The Pope Emeritus has more than once expelled the "critical" cardinals from Mater Ecclesiae to defend his successor or that of Francis. It is rather a narrative device, a bit like when he said more than once that his secretary would have seen a little dog in a stroller, placing the scene from time to time to an imaginary "the other day"? How does the reigning Pontiff know about the content of these alleged conversations between Benedict XVI and some cardinals? Bringing up a "very nice" conversation we had with him shortly after this alleged episode, he would seem to allude to the fact that it was Benedict XVI himself who told him about it.
It is difficult to imagine given that, as far as we know, Ratzinger in his period at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery did not stop meeting and listening to the cardinals who were most uncomfortable in the current pontificate. In any case, as far as the laws on civil unions are concerned, more than one episode reported more than a year after the death of the person concerned, what Joseph Ratzinger wrote in 2003 in an official document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is valid – Considerations regarding the projects for the legal recognition of unions between homosexual people – where we read that «we must abstain from any type of formal cooperation in the promulgation or application of such seriously unjust laws as well as, as far as possible, from cooperation material on the application level".
