Do you have a hard time understanding Pope Francis and what he s up to? Are you wondering what s trying to accomplish? What if I told you that a secret group of leftist cardinals conspired to elect Pope Francis, contravening rules for papal elections? Well, some of you may have already heard of the St. Gallen Mafia, but we have with us an amazing journalist, one of the best researchers I know, who has done a deep dive into the inner workings of this group. And what is most startling is how their stated agenda falls totally in line with the Francis papacy, and it s the best way to make sense of the Francis Papacy.
00:02:36.760So it's a group of high-ranking churchmen,
00:02:39.920and they started meeting at or near St. Gallen, Switzerland in the mid-1990s.
00:02:48.2401996 is usually the date we're given for when they officially start.
00:02:52.560And if the figurehead, the dominant personality of the group is Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini.
00:03:00.300And he had been a Jesuit biblical scholar, and then he became the Archbishop of Milan.
00:03:07.340And in the 1990s, he was kind of seen as the next pope.
00:03:14.720At least the world wanted him to be the next pope after Pope John Paul II.
00:03:19.520And he gave some prominent interviews where he kind of signaled that he was a little flexible,
00:03:26.580let's say, on things like contraception and women priests and that sort of thing,
00:03:31.520kind of just hinting, having a kind of ambiguity that's very suggestive.
00:03:37.160You could even call it Jesuitical, you know, the way that he would answer questions.
00:03:41.280So it's right around the same time that he's being, that talk of him as being bandied about
00:03:49.300as the next pope, that he founds this group called the St. Gallen Mafia.
00:03:54.640And the then bishop of that area in Switzerland, Ivo Fuhrer, was the person who would host these meetings.
00:04:07.760And some of the other dominant personalities would be Cardinal Walter Casper, and he's very familiar to us.
00:04:16.380He's the German theologian who, of course, had the Casper proposal for communion for the divorced and simply remarried.
00:04:24.320He was there, Cardinal, he wasn't a Cardinal then, but Carl Lehman, another German, another,
00:04:34.120he was actually an assistant at one time to Karl Rahner, one of the dominant towering figures of the Second Vatican Council.
00:04:46.680So a lot of these people, they were kind of like the next, they were like the heirs to the Vatican II big personalities.
00:04:54.380And there were other figures that came in, Cardinal Achilles Silvestrini was an important one,
00:05:04.280and he was an Italian diplomat, and he was very kind of scheming, maneuvering.
00:05:09.320And he came into the group in, I believe, 2003, because Martini, the man who should have become the next pope,
00:05:17.540he got Parkinson's disease. And so he had to leave the group, but he still was kind of this spiritual presence for the group.
00:05:28.600So even though he formally left, allegedly in 2003, he remains kind of the dominant figure throughout all of this.
00:05:36.880It's amazing. I believe Cardinal McCarrick was there as well. Is that correct?
00:05:39.900McCarrick is usually not named as a technical member of the group,
00:05:44.400but people have been covered, especially through interviews with James Grine,
00:05:53.060who he's kind of the most famous victim of McCarrick.
00:05:57.700James Grine has talked about how McCarrick spent time in Switzerland, I think in the 1950s.
00:06:05.100And according to Mr. Grine, McCarrick went to St. Gallen, Switzerland,
00:06:12.580like every year for like 20 years or something like that.
00:06:16.740So there's, there's a very, we get to the point where some of this gets very fuzzy and nebulous,
00:06:25.120and it's in the shadows still. And there's still, frankly, further research that needs to be done to clarify what his role was.
00:06:33.320One of the most fascinating things, and this is where I think people really start to get the connection.
00:06:39.680For most people, figuring out Pope Francis has been one of the most difficult things.
00:06:44.920I think almost the whole world was at first, oh, let's give him the benefit of the doubt, you know, no real concerns,
00:06:51.380a few notable exceptions. But, you know, for me anyways, it was like three days in,
00:06:56.360I don't know if you recall, but three days in, he first praises Cardinal Casper, the theology of the, on the knees comment.
00:07:04.140And that's when all the red flags went off, at least for us at LifeSite, it was like, whoa, wait a minute.
00:07:09.000Cardinal Casper was the same guy who fought Pope Benedict all those years ago,
00:07:14.700while he was still Ratzinger in the CDF, over the issue of communion for the divorce and remarried.
00:07:21.380But that didn't figure in right away on day three of the papacy. It was more like, oh, here's the theologian who's doing such great theology.
00:07:27.540And we were like, oh, that's kind of, kind of strange.
00:07:30.240Lay out for us was, if you will, Cardinal Casper and, and his connection here to Pope Francis.
00:07:36.660We know from interviews that Casper has, has done, and, you know, this is documented in the book.
00:07:43.500There's, there's like over 600 footnotes.
00:07:45.720So there's quite a lot of documentation here, if people, you know, want to look any of this up.
00:07:51.220But we know from interviews that Casper met Bergoglio when, when he was a Cardinal, I believe, in Argentina.
00:08:01.140And he actually went back several times and, and had visits with Bergoglio.
00:08:06.500So, so they have this connection, but this really interesting narrative comes up, which kind of ignores that mysterious prior connection that they had.
00:08:19.500And basically talks about the famous story that like, oh, in the con, you know, around the time of the 2013 conclave,
00:08:28.900Casper had just gotten the Spanish translation, Spanish edition of his book, Mercy.
00:08:34.980And so he was, he went to, Bergoglio happened to be like the room across from him.
00:08:42.440And so he went to Bergoglio and shared it with him.
00:08:45.060And then allegedly that was kind of like how he got on, on Bergoglio's radar.
00:08:50.100So this becomes this kind of legend there.
00:08:53.240And then it becomes this explanatory event to, to account for why Pope Francis is praising him three days in.
00:09:02.120But again, as I said, there appears to have been a prior history of visits.
00:09:07.960And we know that the, the mafia was talking about Bergoglio in, in 2001, because Bergoglio had been the, one of the synodal officials for the October synod that they had on collegiality.
00:09:23.940And he, he, he especially impressed Cardinal Godfrey Daniels, who's, who's another important personality in this group.
00:09:33.940So that's kind of a little bit about that.
00:09:36.460It's a very interesting history because what you note about him going to visit Bergoglio.
00:09:42.280So Casper and Bergoglio are visiting in Argentina and nevertheless, we have this then story as if, you know, it comes, the whole idea and notion of the, the, you know, divorce, remarriage communion comes from this beautiful exchange.
00:09:56.340Pope Francis reads Cardinal Casper's work and just is so inspired, gets him to lead off the discussion about that issue of divorce, remarriage communion, which then leads to the first extraordinary citizen of the family, second citizen of the family, Morris Laetitia, where, of course, the whole of the church teaching gets turned upside down by Pope Francis, led in a way by Cardinal Casper.
00:10:17.680But interestingly, they had this connection before.
00:10:22.080A setup isn't all that weird because setups are known to happen with Pope Francis.
00:10:26.360There's a famous story of, you know, Pope Francis taking the bus, you know, of things, but that was a photo op.
00:10:36.080He gets dropped off when in Argentina, still as Cardinal, he gets dropped off a couple of blocks before the rectory so he can be shown to walk there.
00:10:44.100There's another famous story of him, you know, one of his aides having taken his suitcase, his bag, the Pope's bag, up onto the plane already, and he scolds him and says, no, no, no, I wanted to carry it in myself.
00:11:06.060All the cafeteria workers were told they're not allowed to talk to him unless, of course, they're tapped and then they're supposed to be the ones to talk to him.
00:11:12.140So there's a lot of setup, unfortunately, that has gone on in the Vatican in recent days.
00:11:17.360But let's deal with this Cardinal that you now brought up, because I think Cardinal Daniels is also a very central figure in this whole thing.
00:11:52.900And there's video of him where he's just smiling about the fact that, you know, oh, we called ourselves the Mafia.
00:12:02.340So that's where we, you know, definitely where we get the name from.
00:12:07.860And Daniels is an incredibly important and disturbing figure because he, for anyone who doesn't know, he had been caught on tape trying to quiet a sexual abuse victim.
00:12:24.800And this victim was a man who had been abused by his own uncle who became a bishop, a bishop under Daniels.
00:12:34.060And he had been abused from the age of 5 to 18.
00:12:38.280And he can be heard on tape saying things like, why are you always taking the side of my abuser?
00:12:45.460I thought I was coming here to get support from you and you're always taking his side.
00:12:51.640So it's really devastating when you actually look at the transcripts.
00:12:56.500And yet, nevertheless, he began speaking about how he had a resurrection.
00:13:04.380That's his imagery, a resurrection under Pope Francis.
00:13:09.340And he's very important because I think he's where we get the name Francis from.
00:13:15.340We talked about, you know, you were talking very eloquently about setups.
00:13:18.620We all know that, you know, the story of how Pope Francis got his name sounds pretty spontaneous and inspired, right?
00:13:26.760Because Cardinal Humus says, don't forget the poor.
00:13:30.200And a light bulb goes, turns on in Cardinal Bergoglio's mind, who's now Pope Francis.
00:13:38.320And he just decides to become Francis.
00:13:41.160Well, Daniels, of all people, you know, I document this in the book.
00:13:47.040In the 1990s, he was talking about how we need a new Francis.
00:13:51.460Multiple times he has an essay about it.
00:13:53.980And he was telling people about it as well.
00:13:57.520We have documentation of that from the New York Times.
00:14:00.700And right before the 2013 conclave, he gave a press conference and said, we need a Francis.
00:14:08.820So this is another moment where so many of these moments that appear to be, like, beautifully spontaneous and quaint in that way, they appear to be completely scripted.
00:14:22.660The spontaneity is completely programmed into them.
00:14:26.720What's amazing about this and that hugely close connection there between Daniels and Francis is that for all the world, and I mean even the secular world, Daniels should have been a total scandal.
00:14:39.460The reason why he needed to be resurrected, as he said, by Francis was because he was totally shunted by, well, after he was named Cardinal, but nonetheless, shunted by Pope JP II in the end of his papacy and also Benedict.
00:14:52.420Why? Because not only is he on record as having been caught not only covering up, trying to, as you said, silence a victim about the sexual incestuous pedophilia of his uncle, who's a bishop under Daniels, but also because in the Catholic world, he was not pro-life at all.
00:15:18.080In fact, he okayed the king of Belgium to go ahead and legalize abortion.
00:15:22.560He actually is public about wearing a rainbow stall.
00:15:26.920This is a scandal to the faith in so many ways, even the secular way, and yet Francis resurrects him in his own words.
00:15:35.440Let's go on to another one of these figures that I think is really the central character in the story, and this is where we come up with some of the most, and you lay out some of the most fascinating details that explain Francis, that really, for all those of us who are scratching our heads going, where is he going?
00:15:54.920What is up with this? I can't understand this, Pope.
00:15:59.360Your book brings a clarity that really is hard to find, and it's because of this connection to the cardinal you mentioned off the top, Cardinal Martini, Archbishop of Milan.
00:16:12.140Tell us a little bit more about him and his connection to Pope Francis.
00:16:16.900The book has many different chapters, many different personalities.
00:16:22.060For most of the chapters, I try to pick one person to kind of focus on, and then I lay out an issue and a narrative based on that person.
00:16:32.160So Martini has several chapters, but at the end of the day, he's the catalyst for everything, the center of gravity.
00:16:38.800And Martini is interesting because we have testimony from Nicholas Dyat, who talked to a cardinal, and the cardinal indicated that Martini, in the 2005 conclave, under no circumstances, wanted to support Bergoglio.
00:16:59.060So Silvestrini, who I mentioned earlier, was kind of spearheading the movement for Bergoglio to be backed by the mafia, but Martini was unpersuadable.
00:17:14.360And then something happened, because if you look at the late Martini, Eugenio Scalfari indicates that when Martini was, you know, getting close to his deathbed in the last couple months,
00:17:27.360he was talking about the positions that he shared with Bergoglio.
00:17:31.980And then you also have, we have at least one of his works, again, I cite it in the book, but where Martini is quoting Bergoglio in his works.
00:17:48.620We know that from Austin Ivory, who's the papal biographer of Francis.
00:17:53.740But this was the time Martini was quoting Bergoglio.
00:17:57.660So they have this interesting dynamic.
00:18:01.940And then basically, what the book tries to lay out is the case that we have the ghost of Cardinal Martini after he dies.
00:18:11.180And that phrase, ghost of Cardinal Martini, is a very eloquent phrase that the Vaticanista Edward Penton talks about in one of his pieces.
00:18:21.880And I think for me, if I can just focus on one particular instance here, we've seen Pope Francis go to Eugenio Scalfari, the atheist, for a lot of interviews, right?
00:18:36.000Now, there are multiple interviews that Martini gave to Scalfari.
00:18:43.520And one of the interviews talked about the Pope being the Bishop of Rome.
00:18:51.440And it also talked about having councils, and they would be serial.
00:18:59.840And one of them would be the first one, the most important one to have would be on the divorced.
00:19:05.340And then the second or third most important one would be on priestly celibacy.
00:19:13.820You have Francis, who refers to himself over and over again as the Bishop of Rome.
00:19:17.980We have this now ongoing synod over and over and over again.
00:19:22.960And we had the very first, you know, very first one, extraordinary first, on the issue of the family, which was really all about, from its beginning, divorced, remarried communion.