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The Letter of the Thirteen Cardinals. A Key Backstory
Chiesa Espress Online ^ | 10/15/15 | Sandro Magister

Posted on 10/15/2015 1:58:27 PM PDT by BlatherNaut

...In reproving yet again today, October 14, “the fateful letter that has received much more attention than it deserves,” Fr. Federico Lombardi – together with a substantial army of journalists and prelates – seems to have forgotten that the first to squawk over the news of that confidential act was not a presumed emissary of the signers but the vaticanista who is friendliest with and closest of all to Pope Francis, his frequent guest at Santa Marta and his interviewer many times over: Andrea Tornielli, coordinator of the portal “Vatican Insider.”

Tornielli in fact broke the news of the step taken toward the pope back on October 8, four days before their letter became known, with a very well-informed article that appeared jointly on “Vatican Insider” (although it was quickly removed from the home page) and in the newspaper “La Stampa,” on page 9.

In “La Stampa” the article was given the heading “Behind the scenes” and was entitled: “Synod steered, the accusation of 13 prelates. The pope replies: enough with the conspiracy theories.”

And in the body of the article not only was it asserted repeatedly, with absolute certainty, that the authors of the revolt were thirteen – not one more, not one fewer – but it was also specified that among them was Cardinal George Pell, called “the staunchest.”...

...Tornielli, however, presented the arguments in such a way as to show the thirteen in a bad light, identifying them right from the beginning of the article as a “lobby” inside the synod applying “pressure” motivated by “conspiracy theories,” inducing one to “understand that the synod was ‘steered’ by the general secretariat and in the final analysis by the pope in order to nudge it toward openness.”

(Excerpt) Read more at chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it ...


TOPICS: Catholic; Current Events
KEYWORDS: backstory; cardinals; letter; thirteen
A smear campaign against the "staunchest" defenders of orthodoxy, launched from Santa Marta (chez Francis)?
1 posted on 10/15/2015 1:58:27 PM PDT by BlatherNaut
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To: BlatherNaut

The Keystone Kops of Machiavellianism.


2 posted on 10/15/2015 2:06:36 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in."-Mark Twain)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

LOL!


3 posted on 10/15/2015 2:36:17 PM PDT by BlatherNaut
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To: Mrs. Don-o

Maybe we need to cut him some slack. Everybody agrees that this Pope isn’t exactly an intellectual leading light - and his boon companions are all over-80 yr old prelates who didn’t get all they wanted in the first pass, Vatican II, and are probably in the early phases of dementia. So maybe this will be the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Not that “straightness” is something they value...ahem....


4 posted on 10/15/2015 3:32:50 PM PDT by livius
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To: livius
Everybody agrees that this Pope isn’t exactly an intellectual leading light

Who's this "everybody"? The other side thinks Francis is the second coming of who should have come the first time around.

5 posted on 10/15/2015 3:48:30 PM PDT by Legatus (I think, therefore you're out of your mind)
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