The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy-Rev. Ed. 2018
Marcantonio Colonna & H.J.A. Sire & Henry SireThe Inside Story of the Francis Papacy
Could
Pope Francis be the most tyrannical and unprincipled pontiff in modern
times? Yes, says Church historian Marcantonio Colonna, in his
controversial yet judicious new book, The Dictator Pope.
Cardinal
Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope in 2013 as a liberal and a
reformer. In fact, he was neither—except by coincidence. Though he was
not well-known within the College of Cardinals that elected him, close
observers in his native land already recognized him to be a manipulative
politician, skilled at self-promotion, and a disciple of the populist
dictator Juan Perón.
Behind the mask of a genial man of the
people is a pope who cares shockingly little about theology or the
liturgy but is obsessed with his own power. Allying himself with the
most corrupt elements in the Vatican, Francis rules by fear. He has
obstructed or reversed the very reforms that were expected of him and
attempted to alter Catholic teaching by subterfuge. In The Dictator Pope
you will learn:
Marcantonio
Colonna has exhaustively mined his extensive contacts in the Vatican to
produce a provocative and revealing account of Pope Francis's true
motivations. The Dictator Pope is essential reading to understand one of
the most enigmatic, and dangerous, figures to occupy the See of St.
Peter.
These parts of The Dictator Pope seem to foreshadow an end of the Vatican City State:
end of ch. 3:
long, for example, will the Italian judiciary wait before demanding the
names of the Italian citizens who have broken Italian law, in acts from
money laundering to tax evasion, by using APSA-ciphered accounts? Will
European and international banking authorities decide to shut down
APSA’s access to global banking until APSA is reformed by bodies outside
the Vatican? And finally, and most historic of all, will Francis’s
failures prompt the Italian government to denounce the Lateran Treaty of
1929, ending Vatican City’s status as an independent state, in order to
clean up the lawless, corrupt playground the Vatican has become?
end of ch. 5:
Itwas pointed out that, if the Holy See could ride roughshod over the
sovereignty of the Order of Malta, there was nothing to stop the
government of Italy from sending in its police to investigate the
finances of Vatican City. Many suspect that this realization stopped
Pope Francis and Cardinal Parolin from taking over the Order
unconditionally, as their initial declarations suggested.
In the very last section he compares Bergoglio to some real popes:
Probablythe last pope with such a worldly and political approach as Francis’s
was Urban VIII (1623–1644). He involved the papacy in a disastrous war
with neighboring principalities, and at Urban’s death the Holy See was
bankrupt and his family was chased out of Rome. The more lasting damage
that Urban did to the Church was his condemnation of Galileo, not
because he considered that the astronomical theory of heliocentricity
was heretical (the erroneous view that is often taken of the incident)
but in personal revenge for the apparent insult to the pope that Galileo
had woven into his book on the subject.
Perhaps a closer
parallel was a ruler such as Paul IV (1555–1559), a zealot for religious
poverty who was elected pope in his seventies. His political obsessions
led him to fight against the Emperor Charles V, the prime champion of
the Catholic cause in the war against Protestantism that was raging at
that time, and he quarreled, again for political reasons, with Mary
Tudor and Cardinal Pole, who were engaged in the difficult task of
restoring Catholicism in England. His reign ended in political scandal
and popular riots against him. Or one might consider Urban VI
(1378–1389), who was elected as a complete outsider and soon showed that
he lacked the mental balance for his office. The cardinals asked him to
abdicate, and on his refusal declared him deposed and elected an
antipope, thus initiating the forty-year Western Schism. Urban responded
by creating a job lot of twenty-nine cardinals to replace those who had
deserted him, but he soon quarreled with these too and executed five of
them for plotting against him, while several others went over to the
rival side.
Cases such as these illustrate the dangers of placing
a loose cannon aboard St. Peter’s Bark, and the difficulty of deposing a
pope.³⁷
Footnote:
37. In 1632 UrbanVIII’s refusal to support the Catholic cause in the face of the
Protestant military victories that were sweeping over Europe caused
Cardinal Ludovisi (the nephew of the previous pope) to threaten to
depose him as a protector of heresy, while at one consistory Cardinal
Borgia read out a formal protest, with the cardinals crowding round him
to prevent the pope from silencing him. One of the pasquinades that
appeared against Urban VIII asked, “Is His Holiness by chance a
Catholic?”—a question which has been heard in our own times.As of 4/23/18, it's ranked #1 New Release in Church & State Religious Studies.
Ed Pentin interviews Henry Sire (🎩 to NovusOrdoWatch)