One week ago, in the homily for Palm Sunday, Pope Francis thundered against the false accounts “of those who manipulate reality and create a version to their own advantage and have no problem framing others.” Perfect.

Except that one of these very pieces of “fake news,” and one of the most ruinous, had just erupted in his own household, at the hands of his favorite artificer, Monsignor Dario Edoardo Viganò, the man whom Jorge Mario Bergoglio wanted at the helm of all the Vatican media and did not remove from there even after his astonishing false step, which for the pope evidently was no such thing but a good work, even if was hatched against his meek predecessor named Benedict.

In effect, at first everything seemed to be moving in the established direction, as normally happens with well-constructed “fake news.”

Viganò’s objective, at the impetus of Francis, is to promote and sell the image of the pope. An image that until now has been that of the pastor, but now is meant to be expanded with that of the erudite theologian.

In Italian bookstores an “intellectual biography” of Bergoglio has been on sale for a few months in which he is credited as a talented disciple of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century, written by a professor of philosophy, Massimo Borghesi, for years a friend of the current pope.

And since Christmas Libreria Editrice Vaticana has also taken the field, with a series of eleven booklets written by as many theologians, each of them dedicated to exalting one aspect of Bergoglio’s thought.

It was at this point that Viganò orchestrated the great coup of wresting from no less than Benedict XVI, a theologian of recognized greatness as well as being the predecessor of Francis on the see of Peter, the definitive attestation of the profundity of the current pope’s thought.

In mid-January, he asked Joseph Ratzinger to write a presentation, naturally laudatory, of the eleven booklets. And one month later he got the letter of reply.

Which, however, was a flat no. Benedict XVI not only refused to write anything whatsoever, but he said he had not read those booklets and did not want to read them in the future, in part because the authors included some, like the German Peter Hünermann, who had directly opposed the recent popes, from Paul VI to him, in the field of moral doctrine.

But Viganò did not give up. He extracted from the letter of Benedict XVI – disregarding the fact that it had “personal and confidential” written at the top – the few courteous lines in which he recognized that Bergoglio had in any case a “profound theological formation,” and on the evening of March 12 slipped them into a press release entirely aimed at exalting the quasi-degree in theology conferred by the pope emeritus on the reigning pope.

In distributing the statement to journalists, Viganò also read to them the paragraph of the letter with Benedict’s triple refusal. But no one paid any notice. That same evening and the following morning, the Italian media sang in chorus the presumed public blessing given by Ratzinger to the new course of Pope Francis.

End of the story, with the “fake news” perfectly hitting the target? Not at all.

Because L’Espresso online came to blow the lid off, with its blog Settimo Cielo, which at first published the most uncomfortable paragraph of Ratzinger’s letter, that of the triple no, and then revealed the content of the last paragraph, the one against the theologian Hünermann.

On March 17, Viganò was constrained to publish the complete text of the letter and then to resign as prefect of the secretariat for communications. Or better, to act his part, because the pope did not dismiss him at all, but instead showered him with praise and renewed his mandate to bring his mission to completion. Without the slightest word of regret for the unheard-of machination carried out behind Benedict XVI’s back.

Which at least has made one thing clear: that with Francis the platform is now occupied precisely by the opponents of the Catholic morality taught by the preceding popes. And therefore, if there is a continuity between him and Francis, this is only “interior,” mystical, because in reality there is an abyss, which no “fake news” can hide.

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This commentary was published in “L’Espresso” no. 13 of 2018 on newsstands April 1, on the opinion page entitled “Settimo Cielo” entrusted to Sandro Magister.

Here is the index of all the previous commentaries:

> “L’Espresso” in seventh heaven

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For a more detailed reconstruction of the affair, see this previous post from Settimo Cielo:



> Far From Continuity, Here There Is a Chasm. The True Story of the Eleven Booklets

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On the afternoon of March 29, Holy Thursday, the press office of the Holy See released the following statement:

“The Holy Father Francis recently received the founder of the newspaper ‘La Repubblica’ in a private meeting on the occasion of Easter, but without granting him an interview. What the author reported in the article today is the fruit of his own reconstruction, in which none of the pope’s actual words are cited. No passage in quotation marks in the aforementioned article must therefore be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.”

To judge by this statement, “fake news” is therefore a recurring, enveloping, and characteristic element of the current pontificate.

The “founder of the newspaper La Repubblica” cited in the statement is Eugenio Scalfari, a leading figure of the secular Italian intelligentsia, who claims the “privilege of being a friend” of Pope Francis.

The encounter in question – the fifth of the series, not counting the frequent phone calls – took place on the afternoon of March 27, Tuesday of Holy Week, at the Vatican residence of Santa Marta, at the direct invitation of the pope.

This is the account of the conversation published by Scalfari, in “la Repubblica” of March 29:



> Il papa: “È un onore essere chiamato rivoluzionario”

And these are the words attributed by Scalfari to Pope Francis that prompted the Holy See to issue the statement:

“Evil souls do not go anywhere in punishment. The souls that repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the ranks of the souls that contemplate him, but those that do not repent and therefore cannot be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls.”

(English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.)