Writing in L'Espresso, Sandro Magister compared passages from Amoris Laetitia with passages from two articles by Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández.

"The resemblance between the two is very strong," the journalist wrote.

Magister described Archbishop Fernández as the "ghostwriter" of Francis's major texts and his "thinker of reference".

Magister stated that the two Fernández articles, written in 2005 and 2006, were a reaction to a conference in Argentina in 2004 on St John Paul II's encyclical "Veritatis Splendor".

At the time, Fernández was professor of theology at the Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires.

Magister described the articles as "practically in defence of situational ethics", of which Veritatis Splendor had been "decisively critical".

"Partly on account of those two articles, the congregation for Catholic education blocked the candidacy of Fernández as rector of the Universidad Católica Argentina, only to have to give in later, in 2009, to then-archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who fought tooth and nail to clear the way for the promotion of his protégé," Magister wrote.

"In 2013, just after he was elected Pope, Bergoglio even bestowed episcopal ordination upon Fernández, with the title of the extinct metropolitan see of Teurnia," the Italian journalist continued.

Whereas "the chief culprit of the rejection, Dominican theologian Jean-Louis Bruguès" was consigned to the Vatican Apostolic Library, without being given the traditional title of cardinal, Magister added.

In an interview with Corriere della Sera last year, Archbishop Fernández said that "Christ has assured special guidance and illumination for the Pope and at the same time for the bishops as a whole, but not for a prefect or for another structure".

Magister saw this as a slap in the face for the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, German Cardinal Gerhard Müller and the Roman curia.

Sources

• L'Espresso
• Image: Catholic Weekly

The auxiliary Bishop of Hamburg, Bishop Hans-Jochen Jaschke, spoke of this on a German television talk show "Nachtcafe".

Bishop Jaschke mentioned the meeting between the German bishops and the Pope on November 20 last year.

The hypothesis of ordaining married men as priests in order to celebrate Mass in far-flung regions with a scarcity of clergy, especially in Latin America, came up.

Francis "made no sign of refusal", Bishop Jaschke said.

The bishop added that the Pope "is not a dictator" and will act so as to make such measures "universally acceptable" to the Church as a whole.

But the fact that Francis wants to proceed in this direction would seem to be a certainty, wrote Vatican commentator Sandro Magister.

Magister has previously written that married priests is a likely topic for the next synod of bishops.

Meanwhile, last week, a conference on priestly celibacy took place at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

The first speaker was Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the congregation for bishops, who spoke about "Celibacy and Christ's nuptial bond with the Church".

The secretary of the Congregation for Clergy, Archbishop Joël Mercier, spoke of Blessed Pope Paul VI's 1967 encyclical "Sacerdotalis Caelibatus" as "entirely valid in our own time as well".

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin also spoke at the conference, addressing the topic "the priest ordained ‘in persona Christi'".

Sources

• L'Espresso
• L'Espresso
• Image: Jewish Voice from Germany

Veteran Vaticanista Sandro Magister claimed on his blog Settimo Cielo on May 11 that the Pope had "binned" the first draft of the encyclical in March.

Magister said the Pope feared the first draft would have been "demolished" by Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "once it had gotten into his hands".

The draft had been ghost-written by the Pope's theologian friend Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández from Argentina, the National Catholic Register reported.

But Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi said it is "normal and obvious" that, as with any encyclical, the CDF would check the document before publication.

Fr Lombardi said he was unaware of "any cause of delays or problems".

He called the speculation "totally unfounded" and said it "seems almost unbelievable that such things are written".

Fr Lombardi said it is "reasonable to expect the publication within a few weeks, probably in June".

A few days previously, Archbishop Fernández told Corriere della Sera that the Curia "is not an essential structure".

He added that a prefect of a dicastery was essentially not necessary to prevent the Church from "falling into ignominy".

Rather Christ granted the Pope and the bishops a special governance and enlightenment —not to a prefect or some other structure, Archbishop Fernández said.

The archbishop's comments come after Cardinal Müller stated in an interview in April that the CDF's role was to "provide the theological structure of a pontificate".

Archbishop Fernández is considered to be one of Pope Francis's inner circle.

The archbishop, who is rector of the Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires, contributed to Evangelii Gaudium.

He was appointed by Pope Francis as vice president of the commission that drew up the final message of the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family last October.

Sources

• National Catholic Register
• Image: John Thavis blog

The heading for an article by Vatican commentator Sandro Magister described the move as an "earthquake".

As of April 14, rector Fr James McCann and the deans of the faculties of ecclesiastical sciences and Eastern canon law, Philippe Luisier and Michael Kuchera, all Jesuits, were removed.

The interim pro-rector was named as Fr Samir Khalil, 77.

The order from the superior-general of the Jesuits was put up at the institute for a day, but was then removed.

According to Magister, the superior-general denounced the "uncharitable" spirit that has split the teaching community, with grave harm to the institute's mission.

In recent months, Magister continued, some deans and professors had asked for the removal of Fr McCann, who is American, and who had been rector since 2010.

The Jesuits sent an inspector to the institute.

Tensions had been evident four years ago, according to Magister, as shown in a speech by Stefano Parenti, a professor of oriental liturgies at the Pontifical Atheneum of St Anselm in Rome.

"Unlike today, at the end of the 1980s, the Pontifical Oriental Institute was a place of excellence for the study of oriental liturgies and of the Byzantine liturgy in particular," the professor said.

He also critiqued the precariousness of many contracts and what he described as the unusual ways of recruiting and promoting academic staff.

Magister wrote that subjects today are entrusted to "a ragtag group of professors on temporary leave from other universities, who are reduced to doing in a few weeks what should last a whole semester".

And last year, one of the institute's vice-rectors, Costantin Simon, left the Jesuits and was ordained as a Russian Orthodox priest.

To add to the institute's problems, one of its professors, Fr Lanfranco Rossi, was found dead in a rural area outside Rome last week.

According to police reports, the priest, who also taught at the Pontifical Gregorian University, suffered several blows to the head and had been strangled.

The institute has about 400 students from 48 countries.

Sources

• L'Espresso
• Catholic News Service
• Catholic Herald
• Image: CNEWA

Frenchman Fr Louis Bouyer, who died in 2004, was appointed by Pope Paul VI to the Concilium which worked on the revised order of the Mass.

The priest's "Memoires" were published in French earlier this year.

They formed the basis for a commentary by Vatican scribe Sandro Magister last month, in a blog for the Italian publication l'Espresso.

The memoirs were particularly scathing of the role played by Concilium secretary Annibile Bugnini, who Fr Bouyer described as "contemptible".

Magister wrote how, according to Fr Bouyer's memoirs, Fr Bugnini would dismiss other committee members' concerns about certain changes by saying, "The Pope wants it so".

Following the reforms, Fr Bouyer wrote, he was discussing one in particular with Paul VI "which the Pope had found himself approving without being in any way more content with it than I was".

Fr Bouyer told Paul VI that he had been involved in the reform because he was told the Pope himself desired it.

But the Pope responded in turn, "but is it possible? He [Bugnini] told me that you were unanimous in approving it . . .".

Among the incidents recalled by Fr Bouyer is the composition of Eucharistic Prayer II.

"It was Bouyer who had to fix in extremis a horrible formula of the new Second Eucharistic Prayer, from which Bugnini wished to expunge even the 'Sanctus'," Magister wrote.

"And one evening, on the table of a trattoria in Trastevere, he had to rewrite the text of the new canon which is read today at Mass, together with the Benedictine liturgist Bernard Botte, with the added worry of having to deliver the whole thing by the following morning."

Pope Paul VI will be beatified by Pope Francis on October 19.

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: PrayTell Blog

The report by Vatican journalist Sandro Magister said Monsignor Battista Ricca, 57, had a live-in lover when he served as a papal diplomat in Uruguay in the late 1990s and early 2000s, that he cruised gay bars and once got beaten up, and that he brought a young man back to the papal embassy and ended up trapped in an elevator with him overnight before being freed by firemen.

Magister said the Pope did not know of Monsignor Ricca's past because his personal file was sanitized by members of a "gay lobby" in the Vatican.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi rejected the report as "not credible".

But the newsmagazine L'Espresso, which published the report, backed it up with a strongly worded response, insisting it was based on "primary sources" and calling the Vatican's denial "improbable and improvident".

National Catholic Reporter correspondent John Allen said Pope Francis "appears to be standing by his man" so far. He quoted a senior Vatican official as saying that the Pope"has listened to everyone and has confidence" in Monsignor Ricca.

Allen added: "It should be noted there's no suggestion in the story that Ricca was guilty of criminal conduct or sexual abuse and no suggestion he ever faced civil charges.

"Defenders of Ricca insist there's another side to Ricca's story not given in Magister's piece but known to Francis. They say Ricca is a genuine reformer and dredging up a seamy chapter of his past from more than a decade ago may be a smear campaign by elements of a Vatican old guard that doesn't want its power and privilege to slip away.

"Even if he is gay and perhaps struggled at one point with celibacy, they say, what does that have to do with his ability to implement reform in a bank?," Allen added.

Sources:

Chiesa

National Catholic Reporter

Daily Mail

Image: David Icke

Monsignor Battista Mario Salvatore Ricca was described as a "trusted cleric" when the Pope's appointment was announced on June 15.

A veteran diplomat, Monsignor Ricca had recently been serving as director of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican residence where the Pope has chosen to live.

Now Vatican journalist Sandro Magister of L'Espresso newspaper says questions have arisen about Ricca's conduct during a brief assignment at the apostolic nunciature in Uruguay, between 1999 and 2001.

According to Magister, a "rupture" occurred between Ricca and the nuncio in Uruguay, Bishop Janusz Bolonek, and Ricca was suddenly transferred. The journalist says those who confidentially examined the case used the expressions "pink power" and "conducta escandalosa".

Ricca was selected by the council of cardinals supervising the bank. But Magister says he won the Pope's trust through the familiar relations he established with him as director of the Domus Sanctae Marthae and of two other residences for priests and bishops passing through Rome, including one at which the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio used to stay.

Magister says that in late June, when nuncios gathered in Rome to meet Pope Francis in person, the Pope became convinced by "several incontrovertible sources" that he had put his trust in the wrong person.

Another scandal at the Vatican Bank would follow the sudden resignations of its two highest-ranking operational officers, director-general Paolo Cipriani and vice-director Massimo Tulli, on July 1, following the arrest of Vatican accountant Monsignor Nunzio Scarano on a money-smuggling charge.

Their departures — "in the best interests of the [bank] itself and of the Holy See" — forced the president of the bank, Ernst von Freyburg, to step in temporarily as director-general.

Sources:

Chiesa

National Catholic Reporter

Image: La Voce Del Popolo

Though the Pope has give no explanation for this practice, Vatican journalist Sandro Magister has come up with the reason: He does not want to give unrepentant sinners a photo opportunity.

Magister said the reason emerged in a 2010 book of conversations the then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio had with Rabbi Abraham Skorka.

In the book, the cardinal remarked that some people who come forward to receive Communion "take refuge in the Church and do not live according to the justice that God preaches. And they do not demonstrate repentance."

The future Pontiff said: "I do not want these persons to approach me for a photo."

At the time, Cardinal Bergoglio was speaking about employers who exploited their workers by paying unjust wages.

He also referred to "members of charitable organisations who do not pay their employees what they deserve, or make them work off the books".

With others, he said, "we know their whole résumé, we know that they pass themselves off as Catholics but practise indecent behaviours of which they do not repent. For this reason, on some occasions I do not give communion, I stay back and let the assistants do it, because I do not want these persons to approach me for a photo.

"One may also deny Communion to a known sinner who has not repented, but it is very difficult to prove these things.

"Receiving Communion means receiving the body of the Lord, with the awareness of forming a community. But if a man, rather than uniting the people of God, has devastated the lives of many persons, he cannot receive Communion, it would be a total contradiction."

Magister said Pope Francis makes a few exceptions to this policy. For example, at solemn Masses he gives Communion to those assisting him at the altar. Then he sits down.

Source:

Chiesa

Image: Lubbockonline