Schism in Berlin, Leo's Game, Time for the Pope to suspend the Synodal Process in Germany.

The German Nuncio meets the Pope. Unpublished letter from Ratzinger to Cardinal Marx: "Concerned"

The most burning issue that Leo XIV inherited from Francis is in German. The Jubilee Year and the Conclave have not stopped what Cardinal Gerhard Müller has called the "Protestantization Process" of the Catholic Church in Germany. And if Rome has so far stalled in the face of the continued progress from beyond the Rhine, now the thorns are coming home to roost. In the next few hours, the Pope is expected to receive Monsignor Nikola Eterovic, Apostolic Nuncio to Berlin. It is inevitable that the conversation will be dominated by the imminent vote of the German Bishops' Conference on the Statute of the Synodal Conference.

This is a project, already approved by the powerful Central Committee of German Catholics, which will create a permanent body in which the laity will be placed on an equal footing with bishops. This Synodal Conference will have decision-making power and will be able to introduce changes to doctrine by majority vote, forcing dissenters to provide a public justification. Furthermore, the Conference will take over the management of the financial resources of the very wealthy German Church.

Everything the Holy See feared would happen in 2019 when the controversial Synodal Path was launched in Germany and the current Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, Monsignor Filippo Iannone, wrote to the then head of the German Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, to warn that issues such as ordained ministries for women, the separation of powers between lay and clergy, and priestly celibacy "do not concern the Church in Germany but the universal Church and, with few exceptions, cannot be the subject of deliberations or decisions of a particular Church."

In recent years, the German bishops have repeatedly ignored Rome's warnings. Their goal, however, seems to go further and seek to trigger a German "contagion" in the rest of the Church. This is demonstrated by the recent Vatican consistory, in which, as we can reveal, Cardinal Marx spoke expressing his hope for the early adoption of female diaconates. The cardinal is the great architect of the German synodal process and has maintained his leadership even after being replaced as head of the Episcopal Conference. Today, Il Giornale can reveal an unprecedented episode involving Marx: in 2021, Benedict XVI spoke to his successor as Archbishop of Munich and Freising to express his "great concern" about the synodal process in Germany. Vatican sources confirm that in recent years, Ratzinger was highly skeptical about the direction taken by the German Church and was convinced that "this Path will do harm and end badly if it is not stopped." Marx ignored the appeal of the Pope Emeritus, who, a few months later, was severely discredited in his homeland due to a report on abuse commissioned by the Archdiocese of Munich, without being defended by his successor in office.

Now it's Leo XIV's turn. He gets a boost from Cardinal Mario Grech's report to the consistory, which states that "it is always up to the Bishop of Rome to suspend the synodal process, if necessary."

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