The Plot Against Pope Francis

"Donald Trump, who has publicly criticized Francis, has not interfered as his surrogates, who include former White House strategist Steve Bannon; Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former Archbishop of St. Louis; Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States; and others have conspired with the powerful fascist-oriented Opus Dei sect of the church to undermine Francis’s authority. Trump’s eyes and ears inside the Vatican – US ambassador to the Holy See Callista Bisek Gingrich – is the wife of Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, a convert to Catholicism, and a major Trump political ally.

Francis, a former bar bouncer in a tough working-class neighborhood of Buenos Aires, has not been a shrinking violet whe       n it comes to fighting back against his right-wing enemies. Francis’s Italian parents were escaping Benito Mussolini’s fascist rule when they emigrated to Argentina. For Francis, defending the church against the fascist Opus Dei and its allies is a battle worth fighting.

Francis’s enemies have taken a page from the Trump political book. Francis vowed to clean up the church of pedophile priests but he has been charged by his right-wing enemies, including Vigano, Burke, Bannon, Opus Dei, the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, and from behind the scenes – Benedict – of tolerating pedophiles and homosexuals in the church. This is the same sort of gaslighting to which Americans have become all-too-accustomed under Trump.

In order to limit Cardinal Burke’s international reach, Francis suspended him from the post of patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), an autonomous international charity entity in Rome that issues its own passports and maintains diplomatic relations with 107 countries and maintains permanent observer status at the United Nations. In 2017, Francis came to the assistance of the Grand Master of the SMOM, Albrecht von Boeselager, after discovering that Burke and Opus Dei were conspiring to oust Boeselager, a member of a German royal house, as Grand Master. Burke and the rightists wanted to sack Boeselager for distributing condoms to people in Myanmar."  Strategic-Culture

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Well, pilgrims, now this is interesting.  There are some fell people amongst those mentioned, people who would shrink from little to defend their vision of The One True Church.  Edwin O'Brien, mentioned in the article is Grand Master of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre  (an order senior in precedence to SMOM) in which I hold the rank of Knight Commander.  I know nothing of this matter.

Wayne Madsen ,the author, is a bit uneven in his writings.  pl

 

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/10/08/plot-overthrow-pope/

Comments

[turcopolier]

TTG

"as well" as whom?

[confusedponderer]

Seamus Padraig,
yes, typo.

[turcopolier]

lars

Convicted felons have been judged to be uncaring as to their obligations to society. They should not be allowed to vote. You want them to vote so that they can vote leftists into power.

[Fred]

consideration,

The impact of that in the 2016 and 2018 elections was zero. The Florida Legislature is not under the control of Donald J. Trump nor of the federal government, that ended with readmission to the union. The Amendment clearly states "This amendment restores the voting rights of Floridians with felony convictions after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole or probation."

If the convicted felon didn't pay the fines and fees they haven't completed the terms of their sentence. That's not "suppression" but adherence to the law. Perhaps they should not commit felonies, then this would not apply to them.

[The Twisted Genius]

GeorgG, I don't know where you got that info about the name chosen by Pope Francis. This is what Pope Francis, himself, said about it in a 2013 interview.

"And when the votes reached two thirds, there was the usual applause, because the Pope had been elected. And he gave me a hug and a kiss, and said: “Don’t forget the poor!” And those words came to me: the poor, the poor. Then, right away, thinking of the poor, I thought of Francis of Assisi. Then I thought of all the wars, as the votes were still being counted, till the end. Francis is also the man of peace. That is how the name came into my heart: Francis of Assisi. For me, he is the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation; these days we do not have a very good relationship with creation, do we? He is the man who gives us this spirit of peace, the poor man … How I would like a Church which is poor and for the poor!"

[turcopolier]

TTG

As a start, he should sell off all that lovely stuff crammed into the Pontifical Palace, get rid of the trappings of medieval monarchy, have married priests, women priests. He is a working class hero? Well, he should act like it. If some group wants to kill him, so be it. His reward will be at the right hand of Jesus.

[The Twisted Genius]

Francis forgoes a number of Pontifical trappings, far more than his predecessors. However, I agree he should go further as should the entire Church heirarchy. We'll have to see what comes out of the current Synod. I read two thirds of the bishops involved support married priests.

[HK Leo Strauss]

How a Jesuit became Pope should make a good story, he will always be on borrowed time.

[artemesia]

Juan Zarate was a charter member of Stuart Levey's team at U S Dept of Treasury in charge of sanctioning Iran & coercing all international corporations & banks to refrain from doing business with Iran. Zarate called himself and his colleagues, Guerrillas in Grey Suits. (Financial Times dubbed an article on these Guerrillas "An entertaining insider’s account of America’s post 9/11 sanctions regime". Ha ha ha. Iranians & Iraqis laugh all the way to their children's graveyard. https://www.ft.com/content/a1297af0-4de2-11e3-8fa5-00144feabdc0 Were we Anglo Saxon - Europeans always so cruelly and callous?)

Zarate, who was educated in a Catholic high school in California, left Treasury and in 2014 took up a post at "the Vatican's Institute for the Works of Religion ("IOR"), a move announced by Cardinal Pell of the Vatican Finance Ministry as part of Pope Francis I's efforts to clean up the finances of the Vatican."

Callista (Mrs. Newt) Gingrich began her/their Vatican occupation three years later.

Pell, an Australian, has since been convicted of sexually abusing two choirboys. In 2018, Carlo Maria Vigano wrote a bold letter calling on Pope Francis to resign, accusing the pontiff of covering up a homosexual network and other acts of sexual deviance among Church hierarchy and clergy. One outcome of Vigano's letter was Pope Francis's demand that the former archbishop of Washington, Cardinal McCarrick resign. New York Times reported that "Church officials knew for decades that the cardinal had been accused of sexual harassment." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/world/europe/cardinal-theodore-mccarrick-resigns.html

My impression of Vigano's letter was that he acted courageously. It is incomprehensible to me how or why Steve Bannon should have any role to play in the doings of the Catholic hierarchy.

I remember admiring Eugenio Pacelli, and John XXIII. I don't recognize Francis as sharing the same aura as leader of the Catholic people. I think he is owned by neocons.

[artemesia]

Yes! Yes! By all means! Sell it all.
Sheldon Adelson can snap up "all that lovely stuff" to decorate his casinos.
Do you think the Pieta would show best in the atrium, or next to the roulette wheel?

[Vig]

Bannon is, a Trumpist after all, ...

what's the exact difference between Trump and the diverse Trumpists?

from Tea Party to Trump to getting the further "West" in line?

I can understand your dislike of the man, but it is a bit over the top.

[VV]

too polite to openly state their atheism in Madrid

may females be more prone to challenge Monotheism, in whatever silly ways as in Russia considering the place chosen for the event?

Why Madrid? You have access to the Elora Danan's IP?

[vig]

assuming you aren't ironical here, you sound like a solidly American conservative revolutionary. With God on your side?

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel03.html

The Revolution strengthened millennialist strains in American theology. At the beginning of the war some ministers were persuaded that, with God's help, America might become "the principal Seat of the glorious Kingdom which Christ shall erect upon Earth in the latter Days." Victory over the British was taken as a sign of God's partiality for America and stimulated an outpouring of millennialist expectations--the conviction that Christ would rule on earth for 1,000 years. This attitude combined with a groundswell of secular optimism about the future of America to create the buoyant mood of the new nation that became so evident after Jefferson assumed the presidency in 1801.

[GeorgeG]

Thank you, TTG, for the direct quote. If you believe nice stories, I suppose this would be one of them. But perhaps I am closer to Rome, and the situation or the configuration, as I outlined it, gives rise among many to a profound perplexity. “What is the effect of this show?” is one frame of the perplexity which, of course, betrays that the perplexed are not readily willing to believe in and accept symbols donned by the symbol-creator himself. So in Rome people will question Francis’ motive in passing on the symbol-creator-role to Benedict: ‘No, it was not *my* idea, the Francis-Idea was not mine, I had no idea going into the vote, I am not manipulating the symbols, it was Benedict’s idea’. Really? Had Francis said it was his own idea, it would confirm widely felt suspicions. But suppose it really was Benedict’s idea: is that to be understood as a verification that the symbol is authentic, or does it conform to the other idea, namely that this is a “right-left” gang warfare ruse? I am waiting for an alternative explanation for Benedict’s continuing power, an explanation that does not censor the facts.

These are questions posed in Rome, but you need not believe me. Judging from some comments to this post, it seems many are willing to take the one or other side because of this or that “issue”. That would be easier if there were only one pope. The twin-papacy ought to guide one to perplexity.

I didn’t get into the “issues”: that would be a much longer discussion. But, in the spirit of perplexity, let’s let Francis speak (as you quote him): “…these days we do not have a very good relationship with creation, do we?” An enticing question, so what is the developed articulation of that question over the reign of Francis? I suggested that I see such an articulation and that it is not Christian. An articulation would have to address the relationship of humankind to science and creation. I suggested that this is one expression of the great divide between West and East.

[Fred]

Prawnik,

The right to sell slaves has returned to North Africa courtesy of the overthrow of Qadaffi. That right was not disputed in western Africa until those dastardly colonialists from Great Britain put an end to it.

[vig]

it is incomprehensible to me how or why Steve Bannon should have any role to play in the doings of the Catholic hierarchy.

He has? Has he?

Since when? And who are his partners in spirit? Juan Zarate?

[turcopolier]

vig

They are politicians and so is he. Birds of a eather.

[BABAK MAKKINEJAD]

As well as right to go relieve myself in the toilet? Or on any street corner - like in Paris and Madrid and Rome and Tehran?

[Seamus Padraig]

But the question is why did Benedict resign? That isn't normal. It'd been many, many centuries since the last time a pope resigned, so I naturally suspect that something was going on behind the scenes. Was he forced out? Maybe so.