Battle with St. Gallen Mafia fought in Brussels

Benedict XVI, Léonard's friend, less so Danneels

It took only eleven days after the funeral of John Paul II for the person who presided over the ceremony to succeed him, on 19 April 2005...

Twenty-four hours and four rounds of voting were enough to send him to the throne of Peter... Religious chroniclers were dubious about such an expeditious outcome when the Sistine doors isolated the 115 voters, expecting a laborious process. It was not to be.

Shortly before 7pm, Rome and the world learned that the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was succeeding Karol Wojtyla. It was then that it became known that Cardinal Danneels would be meeting the press at the Belgian College that evening.

The head of the Belgian Church therefore deliberately 'brushed aside' the planned meal with his peers and reserved his impressions for the special envoys. Obviously, Ratzinger's choice was not his own. The Cardinal exclaimed that "if Ratzinger had been chosen, he would have been the Pope we wanted to have", not without a hint of bitterness. It was as if he were at a press briefing with a party president who was depressed by the election figures... An impression that was reinforced by his icy tone. And his assertion that "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" raised many eyebrows in conservative circles.

The "St. Gallen Mafia"

Religious informants deduced that Benedict XVI could put the Belgian church in order. Especially by promoting the bishop of Namur, André-Mutien Léonard. Joseph Ratzinger had long been fond of him, having worked with him on the International Theological Commission and the review Communio. These close ties, it was rumoured, had enabled Leonard to become a bishop in 1991. The Belgian church hierarchy had prevented his appointment in Liège in 1985, but then had to give in. Then Ratzinger moved heaven and earth so that his friend could preach Lent in the Vatican. The rest is history: Leonard succeeded Danneels as archbishop but never became a cardinal.

After the 2005 conclave, tongues were wagging that Godfried Danneels had been a strong supporter of Cardinal Martini against Ratzinger. But the ailing archbishop of Milan withdrew and the last challenger to Benedict XVI was... Cardinal Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis.

The "St. Gallen Mafia" was the name given to a group of reform-minded prelates of various nationalities who, from 1996 onwards, gathered around the local bishop, Ivo Fürer, in what he called a "Freundeskreis" ("circle of friends") to exchange views freely on the problems of the Church.

When his biography by Jürgen Mettepenningen and Karim Schelkens was published in 2015 in Koekelberg, Godfried Danneels referred to the accusation of a mafia group with his characteristic humour. All the more so as his biographers also denied, with many arguments, that the group could have been a Pope-making lobby.

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