The wicked influence of the St. Gallen Mafia

The 'St. Gallen Mafia'. An interview with Julia Meloni

Dies Irae and Corrispondenza Romana are pleased to publish this exclusive interview with José Narciso Soares and Diogo de Campos by Julia Meloni, author of the recent book The St. Gallen Mafia (TAN, 2021).

1. Allow us, first of all, to thank you for the great honour you do us by granting us this exclusive interview. What led you to write the book The St. Gallen Mafia - Unmasking the Secret Reformist Group within the Church?

I have been fascinated and at the same time disturbed by the St. Gallen Mafia ever since I first read Henry Sire's The Dictator Pope, the first chapter of which deals precisely with the subject of the Mafia. After writing a series of articles about the Mafia for Crisis Magazine, I began to think about the fact that there was no book in English about a study of the St. Gallen Mafia and the need for a reporter to gather information about it and thus tell its story.

2. Your new book is a valuable contribution to the complex issue of the election of the Pontiffs in the last half century and the alleged influence that groups, such as the St. Gallen Mafia, have had in such delicate processes. The title he gave to the first part of the work, War, is quite intriguing. What kind of war are we talking about and what kind of weapons are its makers using?

The title of the first part of the book - 'War' - alludes to an episode in Chapter 2, 'Silvestrini'. There we learn that an anonymous cardinal ran into a St. Gallen Mafia mastermind, Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, on the night of Pope Benedict's election in 2005. According to this anonymous cardinal, Silvestrini appeared as a defeated man and seemed to be declaring some kind of war against Benedict.

The rest of Part I clarifies the characteristics of this war and what its weapons were. We learn, for example, how Silvestrini is believed to have leaked a diary of the conclave that misrepresented the number of votes for Benedict in order to destabilise him. We also learn that three other members of the mafia were waging their own personal wars: Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, who wanted a new Council; Cardinal Walter Kasper, who wanted to give subversive prominence to local churches; and Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who wanted to wage war against Humanae Vitae.

3. At one point you state that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, surprisingly considered by many to be a conservative at the time of his elevation to the cardinalate, was introduced to the St. Gallen group by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the late Archbishop of Milan. However, she goes on to say that there was a conflict between Bergoglio and Martini, both Jesuits, as the latter clearly followed the line of the famous Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J., while the Argentine would have been more 'moderate'. On the eve of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's election, the St. Gallen mob, gathered in the flat of Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, considered Bergoglio the best candidate to ascend to the Chair of Peter. However, this did not happen and instead the 'right-hand man' of John Paul II was elected. You claim that Martini was more comfortable with Ratzinger's election than Camillo Ruini's. But in your opinion, was he displeased that Bergoglio, his 'cordial adversary' within the Mafia, was not elected on that occasion?

I think that Martini, based on the evidence provided to us by Nicholas Diat, certainly did not want to support Bergoglio and therefore must have felt some sense of relief when the Latin American cardinal was not elected. And, yes, several Vatican observers suggest that Martini ultimately preferred to shift his votes to Ratzinger to avoid a worse outcome, namely Ruini's ascension to the papacy.

4. Is it possible to prove when this group of cardinals started meeting in St. Gallen? Did they already have a fixed agenda from the beginning or rather was it expanded and corrected over time?

According to the official narrative, articulated in the biography of Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the St. Gallen Mafia began meeting around 1996. However, astute Vatican observers like Maike Hickson have pointed out that a group called the Council of European Bishops' Conferences (CCEE) actually acted as a kind of precursor of the Mafia in that two of its presidents - Basil Hume and Martini - would later become members of it.

As for the Mafia agenda, we know that they were already using CCEE as a kind of alternative power structure or 'parallel magisterium', as Maike Hickson points out. We also know that a few years after their official meetings, in 1999, Martini was raising the issue of a new Council. So it is not difficult to assume that their agenda was broadly defined from the beginning. In fact, we learn from Danneels' biography that the essence of their agenda was simply their common opposition to Ratzinger.

5. The recently deceased Archbishop of Malines-Brussels, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, one of the members of the St. Gallen group, described it as a 'mafia'. In common parlance, the term 'mafia' is associated with a criminal organisation. Do you think that these cardinals 'conspired' to impose a government programme on the Pontiff coming out of the Conclave?

The group's self-designation as 'mafia' is certainly a curious, revealing choice. They were clearly plotting a revolution in the Church, a specific programme that began with Kasper's proposal for Communion to the divorced and civilly remarried. We have ample evidence that Martini and others had codified this agenda over many years. As for the manner of its implementation, it is clear that a specific person was to execute the agenda of the mob: Bergoglio. So it is significant that, for example, a few days after his election, Pope Francis specifically praised Cardinal Walter Kasper, setting in motion the Mafia's old plan to carry out the latter's proposal.

6. On 1 March 2013, a dozen days before Francis' election, the still Cardinal Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, visited Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, then Archbishop Emeritus of Westminster, and had dinner with him. The next day, a cardinal, who remained anonymous, told the media that four years of Bergoglio's pontificate would be enough to 'change things'. Murphy-O'Connor immediately expressed the hope that Bergoglio, should he be elected Pontiff, as has since happened, could remain in office for many more years. Do you believe that the election of Francis I was the realisation of a Machiavellian plan by the St. Gallen Mafia?

There is abundant evidence, collected in my book, that shows how Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor and other Mafia alumni lobbied for Bergoglio's election in 2013. One curious detail I like to point out is this: where did Pope Francis get his name? We all know the story of how Cardinal Hummes, upon Bergoglio's election, asked him not to forget the poor, and so the latter spontaneously thought of the name 'Francis'. But, in fact, Cardinal Danneels repeatedly called for a new Francis as early as the 1990s and up until a few weeks before the 2013 conclave. So the name, the programme and the election of Pope Francis all seem to be the result of careful and calculated manoeuvring by the St. Gallen Mafia.

7. Do you believe that Benedict XVI's resignation from the Papacy, announced on 11 February 2013, was supported and even influenced by the St. Gallen group? As far as we know, Pope Ratzinger had already talked to Martini in mid-2011 about the possibility of resigning from the papacy. Was Benedict XVI not sufficiently able to drive away the wolves he seemed to fear so much and referred to on 24 April 2005 in his homily at the beginning of his Petrine ministry or, worse, did he allow himself to be surrounded by those wolves?

Benedict's resignation is an enigma, but it seems that the German pope was a naive person surrounded by wolves. What the book reports is this: (1) that Martini boasted of having had several private meetings with Benedict in 2011-2012; (2) that in 2012 he had shared with a confidant his wish that Benedict would resign 'soon'; (3) that Martini's confessor reported how, in June 2012, the latter had asked Benedict to resign; (4) that Martini told his confidant that a new conclave might well elect conservative Cardinal Angelo Scola. So some questions arise: did Martini at least help reassure Benedict that abdicating was the right decision if the latter was already planning to resign? Or was Martini's influence more threatening than that? The book deliberately refrains from interpreting this evidence, thus allowing the reader to make sense of these facts.

8. Since Paul VI's Apostolic Constitution Romano Pontifici eligendo, published on 1 October 1975, prohibits any external injunction to influence the election of a new pope, how would you qualify the St. Gallen Mafia?

The book gives hints of the kind of penalties former members of the mafia might have incurred due to their shady activities. But on this issue I refer to the specialists in this field.

9. In the 1970s Cardinal Walter Kasper, very close to Bergoglio and the Mafia, led a crusade for the admission of adulterers to Holy Communion. With Amoris Lætitia, in 2016, Francis began to defend this sacrilegious practice in an unequivocal but equally ingenious way. Is this another victory for St. Gallen and Kasper, or is it instead nothing more than an attempt by Bergoglio to please those who support him without really putting himself into it?

Vatican experts like Sandro Magister have long reported that at the time Cardinal Bergoglio was in the habit of giving Communion to every person who asked for it. Magister has suggested how this was an important reason why the St. Gallen Mafia was interested in the Latin American cardinal as Pope. So I believe that Pope Francis was not simply trying to pacify his supporters with Amoris Laetitia; rather, he uses impersonal expressions in the text to advance a practice whose implementation is evidently up to him.

10. Still on the subject of Amoris Laetitia, there are those who claim that it is a true "testament" of Cardinal Martini. To what extent is this theory true?

I think it is very true. The historian Roberto de Mattei has convincingly argued that the essence of Amoris Laetitia is contained in Martini's 'Last Testament', the last interview he gave, published immediately after his death in 2012. In that Testament, Martini spoke specifically about bringing the sacraments to civilly remarried divorcees, thus foreshadowing the re-proposition of Kasper's proposal in the synods on the family and then in Amoris Laetitia.

11. In an interview in 2009, Martini indicated that the priorities for revolution in the Church would be, in this order, divorce, priestly celibacy and the relationship between the Church hierarchy and politics. Two of these issues are resolved, or at least in the process of being resolved - divorce and the relationship between the Church and politics - if only by deviating from the unchanging Magisterium of the Church. The recent meeting between Bergoglio and Biden is a clear demonstration of this. What will be missing for this threefold programme to be duly completed?

In the book I argue that the realisation of this programme is a matter of 'patience' and 'time', borrowing the titles of my last two chapters. For example, although we do not yet have a subversive 'solution' to the question of priestly celibacy, the modus operandi of revolutionaries is to move forward gradually and cunningly. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether they will actually have enough time to carry out their plans.

12. Throughout the book, in more than one passage, you refer to time. When it comes to the future, i.e. Bergoglio's succession, what influence can what remains of the St. Gallen mafia still have? And, of course, which name could be the most popular within the group?

Although most of the members of the mafia are deceased, with the notable exception of Cardinal Kasper, their ideas survive in several of their fellow travellers and pupils. Although the Mafia does not currently meet secretly behind the scenes, its spirit will remain in the light of day, especially since Pope Francis has appointed many of the cardinals who will choose his successor. In terms of who that successor might be, my impression is that it will be someone unexpected.

13. Finally, what can we expect from this whole complex situation that has shaken and discredited the Papacy with controversy after controversy?

'Motus in fine velocior', as the old proverb says. As we presumably approach the end of Pope Francis' pontificate, events seem to be speeding up with the devastating document Traditionis Custodes and the 'Martini-style' synod on synodality. We must pray, fast and speak out so that the revolutionaries' plans do not come to fruition.

Source