The excommunication of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò for “his refusal to recognize and submit to the Supreme Pontiff” presents us with an opportunity to revisit Viganò’s claim that the pope is not valid.
Among the many reasons Viganò offers for saying so is the possibility that the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio was rigged and thus invalid. The rigging, he says, was largely the work of the Sankt Gallen Mafia, a group of liberal bishops who met regularly in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland, supposedly for the purpose of finding a candidate for pope more in line with their humanistic agenda.
Since most of the original Sankt Gallen Mafia are now dead, and since the papal election is conducted in secret, it wouldn’t be easy to confirm Viganò’s charge of election tampering. Moreover, few, if any seem disposed to investigate the matter.
The prevalent attitude among the Catholic commenting class is that the Holy Spirit has spoken and thus the matter is closed.
Well, it’s true that the Church teaches that the pope is protected by the Holy Spirit from teaching error. But does the Church also teach that the Holy Spirit prevents the College of Cardinals from electing the wrong man? As theologian Jared Staudt points out, “the Holy Spirit does not choose the pope … the cardinals choose the pope while praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”
The Cardinals Choose the Pope
For support of this view, Staudt cites Benedict XVI’s answer to a question posed by an interviewer for Bavarian television in 1997 (when he was still a cardinal). When asked if the Holy Spirit is responsible for the election of a pope, he responded:
I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope … I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for who one must vote … There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked.
In short, the Holy Spirit does not override the free will of the cardinals. He leaves them free to make mistakes, and he leaves them free to sin.
Sin, in turn, may open up a cardinal to scandal and even blackmail. Indeed, Viganò suggests that fear of blackmail may be a major factor in swaying a cardinal to vote for a candidate he knows little about or about whom he fears the worst. The homosexual subculture among clergy in Rome ensures that many of the cardinals are open to blackmail. Moreover, even those who have reformed themselves are vulnerable. A priest may confess his sins and recommit to his vows of chastity but the threat of blackmail still remains. The same is true of “youthful indiscretions” (whether homosexual or heterosexual) committed as a seminarian. The communal nature of seminaries almost guarantees that such indiscretions can always be dredged up at some future date.
The Intimidation Factor
Cardinal electors can also be intimidated into voting the “right way” lest false charges of scandal be brought against them. For example, an attempt to connect Cardinal Angelo Scola to a major political and financial scandal during the election conclave of 2013 seems to have been the main factor in throwing the vote to Cardinal Bergoglio. Up until the scandalous charges were raised, Scola (who was the candidate Benedict favored) was the papal frontrunner.
A more ominous example of false charges is provided by the case of Australian Cardinal George Pell. On the basis of very scanty evidence that he had molested two teenage choir boys, Pell spent 404 days in prison.
It is now widely thought that the trumped-up case against Pell was facilitated by individuals within the Vatican who feared the results of Pell’s investigation into notoriously corrupt Vatican finances. In any event, in 2020 an Australian appeals court unanimously acquitted Pell of the abuse charges, and he was released from prison at age 78.
If nothing else, Pell’s case illustrates that the fear of being falsely accused of abuse is perfectly justified. But that’s not all. It now appears that Pell may have been murdered.
A Suspicious Death
After his acquittal, Pell returned to Rome. On January 9, 2023, he died in a hospital from cardiac arrest following routine hip surgery. At least, that was the story at the time.
More recently, however, Libero Milone, the former auditor-general of the Vatican who worked closely with Pell, raised concerns about the circumstances of Pell’s death.
Among the suspicious circumstances it’s reported that Cardinal Pell was alone in a room after surgery, that the electricity went out and that when it came back on, he was found dead. Moreover, Pell’s nose was broken, leading some to believe that assassins had suffocated him with a pillow. In addition, according to one report “two of Cardinal Pell’s closest confidants in the Church had urged him not to undergo surgery in Rome and instead return home to Australia for the procedure over concerns about his safety and welfare.”
Was Pell murdered to prevent him from divulging what he knew about financial crimes in the Vatican? At this point, it’s mostly speculation. And many Catholics would like to see the speculation go away. Many find it difficult to believe in the existence of a homosexual “mafia” in the Church or in the possibility of a rigged papal election, blackmail, false accusations, and embezzlement, let alone an assassination. Moreover, many may fear that such charges do serious damage to the Church’s credibility.
A Prudent Decision
Now that he has been excommunicated, Archbishop Viganò has come in for harsh criticism from some Catholic quarters for having gone too far. He has been dismissed as an “unhinged” conspiracy theorist who got what he deserved.
Yet Viganò seems to have been largely right about what is going on in the Church and in the world. He was right about the McCarrick coverup and about the extent of both financial and moral corruption in the Church. And he was right about the danger of speaking out against the “Deep State” and the “Deep Church.”
After the publication of his letter about the Church’s cover-up of the McCarrick affair, he went into hiding. Moreover, when he was summoned to Rome in June to face charges of schism, he refused to appear. This could be interpreted as a case of unhinged paranoia. Or it could be acknowledged as a realistic assessment of what happens to those who expose corruption in high places.
In light of the possible assassination of Cardinal Pell and in light of the recent assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, Viganò’s decision to keep his whereabouts unknown seems prudent.
With Evidence Comes Credibility
Granted, his rock-the-boat accusations do not always seem prudent. Indeed, some of the conspiracy theories he subscribes to seem over the top.
On the other hand, some of them make a lot of sense. The evidence for the existence of a “Deep State” seems stronger every day. Nowadays, the burden of proof seems to fall on those who deny the existence of a powerful bureaucratic shadow state. Likewise, Vigano’s claim that Francis is an anti-pope may seem extreme to some, but there is such a thing as an anti-pope, and on several occasions the Church has had to decide which of the two claimants to the throne of St. Peter is the valid pope and which is the pretender.
Yes, some of Viganò’s conspiracy theories seem to border on Alex Jones territory, but some of them have gained credibility as more evidence comes in.
The same is true of many of the recent conspiracy theories that most Americans are familiar with. Time has shown that some supposed conspiracies were real conspiracies. For example, the Trump-Russian collusion hoax was just that — a hoax manufactured by the Clinton campaign with some help from FBI agents. According to The Hill, “Democrats associated with the Clinton campaign paid a foreigner to spread salacious lies about Trump (the Steele Dossier) prior to the 2016 presidential election, and then pushed those claims in the lapdog media.”
Another major hoax concerned Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. Initially, it was claimed that the contents of the laptop were “Russian disinformation.” Moreover, Joe Biden claimed that he had received a letter from 50 former intelligence officials confirming that the contents of the laptop was “a Russian plant.”
Further evidence, however, has established that the laptop is a genuine item and that its contents are the creation of Hunter Biden. No one (except, perhaps, Joe Biden) still believes that the Russians had anything to do with it. The existence of the laptop is no longer a conspiracy theory, it’s a fact.
A Rigged Papal Election?
As more and more conspiracy theories turn out to be true, one ought to be careful about dismissing Vigano’s claims about a “Deep State” and a “Deep Church” as baseless. It was precisely the power of the Deep State (let’s drop the quotation marks) that suppressed the truth about the Trump-Russian collusion hoax and the Hunter Biden laptop for so long.
One needn’t accept all of Vigano’s conjectures, but some of them ought to be taken more seriously — particularly his claim of a rigged papal election. One good reason to take it seriously is a growing belief that America’s last presidential election was rigged.
A few years ago, any suggestion that the election was stolen could land one in hot water. Democrats wanted to make it a crime to question the voting results, and some employers hinted that election deniers better keep their opinions to themselves
Nevertheless, according to the polls, two-thirds of Republican voters and nearly three in 10 Americans believe that the election was stolen by means of fraudulent mail-in ballots, rigged voting machines, false vote counts, and other measures.
By contrast, there has been very little suggestion among Catholics that the papal election which brought Bergoglio to power was rigged. This is probably due in part to the false perceptions held by many Catholics that papal elections, like papal teachings, are infallible. In short, it’s probable that many Catholics feel that in questioning the decision of the College of Cardinals, they are questioning the choice of the Holy Spirit. In addition, most Catholics respect the office of cardinal and are disinclined to think that a cardinal will do anything other than vote his conscience. Few Catholics are aware of the pressures, intrigues, fear of blackmail, and other factors that may indeed keep a cardinal from voting his conscience.
Finally, apart from these considerations, Catholics tend to believe that the strict protocols which surround the voting process ensure that rigging the vote is well-nigh impossible.
Silencing A Courageous Voice
It’s ironic, of course, that many of those Catholics who believe that the papal elections were honest and aboveboard are probably among the two-thirds of Republican voters who believe the presidential election was stolen.
One other irony is that stealing a papal election would, considering the relatively small number of electors, be a far less complicated business than stealing a national election involving 50 states, millions of voters, and thousands of polling places. Is it really unimaginable that a papal election could be stolen? We know that some of the cardinals were quite dissatisfied with the papacy of Benedict and had attempted to block his election in 2005. There was, after all, a “Sankt Gallen Mafia” (a name they gave themselves), and we know from various sources (such as the biographers of Cardinal Godfried Danneels) that they worked diligently to put Bergoglio on the throne of Peter.
Nevertheless, raising doubts about Bergoglio’s election seems to be a risky business. And if the attempt to silence Viganò is successful, Catholics will have lost one of the few voices courageous enough to challenge the don’t-ask-questions mentality now prevalent in Rome.
Pictured above: St. Peter’s at night
Photo credit: Pixabay
