Enzo Bianchi, the Pope, and “That ‘Fox’ Herod”

Ten months after the papal decree that sentenced him to exile from the monastery of Bose that he founded, Enzo Bianchi still has not obeyed, and continues to live in a hermitage on the monastery grounds.

But many knots also remain untangled on the part of those who judged him. Bianchi’s conviction was never made public in its entirety. Neither the accusations nor the faults ascertained in the apostolic visitation ordered by Rome are known, except for a vague “tense and problematic situation in the community regarding the exercise of authority by the founder, management practices, and the fraternal atmosphere.” Too little to justify such a heavy punishment, heaped upon a champion of Catholic progressivism and ecumenism among the most brilliant and applauded in the world, until recently among the favorites of Pope Francis, who in 2014 had promoted him as consultant of the pontifical council for Christian unity and in 2018 had enrolled him as an “auditor” with the synod of bishops on young people, complete with the right to speak.

It is the judgmental role of the pope, above all, that is disturbing. Even the most ardent supporters of Bianchi - from the Church historian Alberto Melloni to the psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati - in spite of paying lip service to absolving Francis and blaming an unspecified “Vatican feud” for the hatching of the plot, in fact know that in the end it all came down from him, from the pope.

And there is no appealing the sentence with Francis, much less with the supreme tribunal of the apostolic signatura, simply because the decree of May 13 2020 that sentenced Bianchi to “separate” in spirit and body from Bose, signed by secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin, has the canonical form of a “singular decree” approved by the pope “in specific form,” which makes it definitive and not subject to appeal.

Much has already been written about the monocratic absolutism that characterizes the pontificate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, including on Settimo Cielo. Few however have drawn attention to those particular tools of command that are precisely the Vatican decrees approved by the pope “in specific form.”

A scholar to have done so, on a scientific level, is an instructor of procedural law at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Professor Gian Paolo Montini, in a 2018 essay in “Periodica de Re Canonica,” the specialist magazine of which he is editor.

Since 2008 Montini had been a promoter of justice at the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the high court of the Holy See. But in the summer of 2019, at the age of 64, he was suddenly dismissed from office and returned to his diocese of origin, Brescia, without any explanation, but perhaps precisely on account of that article he published the year before. Which is worth going over here briefly.

Beginning with the quotation from Joseph Ratzinger that is prominently placed at the opening of the article:

“The denigration of the law is never and in no way at the service of freedom, but it is always a tool of dictatorship. The elimination of law is contempt for man: where there is no law, there is no freedom.”

In a footnote Montini also reports the other words that Ratzinger had immediately prefaced to those cited above:

“The ironizing [from the German 'Ironisierung', making a mockery - ed.] of the law belonged to the foundations of National Socialism (I don't know enough about the situation with regard to Italian fascism). In the so-called ‘years of struggle’ the law was very consciously trampled on and contrasted with so-called healthy popular sentiment. Subsequently the Führer was declared as the only source of law and thus whim was put in the place of law.”

Well then, what induced Montini to associate these terrible words of Ratzinger, taken from a 2000 “Lectio doctoralis” in homage to the jurist Sergio Cotta, with the Vatican decrees approved by the pope “in specific form” and therefore not subject to appeal?

To understand this takes nothing more than following the thread of his analysis.

For starters, Montini reconstructs the genesis of this procedure, introduced for the first time in 1999 in the General Regulations of the Roman Curia, in article 126.

In this article 126, among other things, it is established that the request for approval “in specific form” must be presented to the pope “in writing, giving the reasons for it” and accompanying it with a file that “must be left with the Supreme Pontiff, in such a way that He may examine it personally” and decide accordingly after due consideration.

Not only that. It appears that among the acts approved “in specific form” by Pope Francis there often appear “clear and blatant violations of the procedure referred to in art. 126 of the General Regulations of the Roman Curia,” violations that “can legitimately lead to the presumption of nullity of the approval in specific form by the Supreme Pontiff.”

Unfortunately, however, the Vatican legal system does not assign to any judge the competence to “judge the nullity or illegitimacy of the same approval in a specific form.” With the consequence that the pope can really do what he wants, even “contra legem,” and so he does.

In concluding his essay, Montini first quotes a French canonist according to whom
“Too frequent recourse to this shortcut […] can induce in the faithful subjected to judgment a feeling of injustice and incomprehension of the exercise of authority.”

Then he expresses the hope that the pope's approvals “in specific form” will at least be requested and obtained “in accordance with the law.”

He insists however on the fact that “the current trend towards the multiplication of requests for approvals in specific form is consistent with the continued divestiture of the Apostolic Signatura,” increasingly prevented from judging “in the matters of its (now residual) purview.”

Of course - Montini objects - “it will be said that the deterrent function against abuses of law in the exercise of executive power remains equally effective and valid, even if only on account of the mere existence of the Apostolic Signatura.”

But even if that were true, he concludes, this “would prompt a bit of thought - by analogy - on the singular theory that hell indeed exists, but is empty.”

December 6 2019 - An apostolic visitation ordered by the pope begins at the monastery of Bose, by Guillermo León Arboleda Tamayo, Benedictine abbot, Amedeo Cencini, Canossian and consultant of the Vatican congregation for religious, and Anne-Emmanuelle Devêche, abbess of Blauvac. The monastery gives news of this in a statement, in which it mentions problems concerning “the exercise of authority, management practices, and the fraternal climate”:

January 6 2020 - The apostolic visitation ends and the visitors prepare to deliver their report to the pope.

March 27 2020 - Pope Francis receives in audience the first of the three visitors, Abbot Guillermo León Arboleda Tamayo.

May 13 2020 - Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state, signs a “singular decree approved in specific form by the pope.” The decree is delivered to the parties concerned on May 21 by Amedeo Cencini, in the meantime appointed “pontifical delegate ‘ad nutum Sanctae Sedis’, with full powers.” And on May 26 the monastery, in a press release, announces the decree and specifies that brother Enzo Bianchi, the founder, and two other monks and a nun “will have to separate from the monastic community of Bose and move to another place, forfeiting all positions currently held,” but they immediately oppose the measures. The Bose communiqué is also reissued by the Vatican media.

May 27 2020 - In a memo the founder of Bose, Enzo Bianchi, appeals to Rome: “In vain to those who delivered the decree to us did we ask that we be allowed to know the evidence of our shortcomings and to be able to defend ourselves from false accusations. I ask that the Holy See help us and that, if we have done something that goes against communion, we be told.”

June 1 2020 - In a new press release, the monastery of Bose announces that Bianchi, the nun, and the other two monks “have declared that they accept, albeit in a spirit of painful obedience, all the provisions contained in the decree of the Holy See of May 13 2020.” And therefore, “beginning in the next few days” they will go to live “in places distinct from Bose and its Fraternities.” This is not mentioned in the press release but it will become known afterward that in the Vatican decree the separation was established “within and no later than ten days from the date of notification of the same decree.”

August 15 2020 - In a tweet, Bianchi writes: “I have been away from the community for three months, without having had any more contact with it. I live in radical solitude in a hermitage outside the community.” But in reality the hermitage is the same one in which he has lived for over a decade, on the monastery grounds.

August 18 2020 - In an interview with “Confini,” Riccardo Larini, former monk of Bose, which he left in 2005, claims to have read the Vatican decree of May 13 - the full text of which has never been made public - and specifies that it contains not only the “prescriptions addressed to the four members who have been expelled,” regarding whom “the only accusation made is of interference with the government of the community,” but also “guidelines on the form that the community will have to take in the future from a canonical and liturgical point of view,” which in his opinion would radically sever the monastery from its original form.

January 4 2021 - The papal plenipotentiary Cencini, with a decree that has “the approval of Cardinal Pietro Parolin,” orders the monastery of Bose to vacate the house of one of its peripheral communities, in Cellole di San Gimignano, in Tuscany, and to put it “on loan for free use,” without any indication making reference to Bose, Bianchi, and other brothers and sisters who may wish to settle there with him. Cencini gives news of all this in a statement dated February 8, which states among other things: “More than eight months have now passed since the date on which Br. Enzo Bianchi was to have carried out the provisions of the decree [of May 13 2020 ], which he had accepted in writing.…”

February 8 2021 - In a memo entitled “A painful step,” the monastery of Bose announces that it has prepared the house in Cellole di San Gimignano to host Bianchi.

February 18 2021 - In another memo entitled “An fruitless suffering,” the monastery of Bose writes that “Br. Enzo did not go to Cellole in the times indicated to him by the decree of the pontifical delegate of last January 4.” The deadline for the transfer was set for February 16, the eve of Ash Wednesday, and two brothers - specifies the note - had already “gone to Cellole to better prepare for the arrival of Br. Enzo,” in a house “to the renovation of which” Bianchi himself years earlier “had actively contributed, even determining the layout of the rooms set aside for him once he resigned as prior in 2017.”

February 25 2021 - In a tweet, Bianchi writes: “They have taught me to be silent in order to obey my conscience first of all, then if in the Church a man of God asks it of me, and if charity requires it of me. But I know how to be silent before those who do not deserve my word, as Jesus did before that ‘fox’ Herod.”

March 4 2021 - Pope Francis receives in audience Fr. Amedeo Cencini, the pontifical delegate ‘ad nutum Sanctae Sedis’ for the monastic community of Bose, along with its prior, Fr. Luciano Manicardi. And a subsequent press release from the Holy See states:

"His Holiness wanted in this way to express his closeness and support to the prior and the community, in this troubled phase of its life, confirming his appreciation for the same and for its peculiarity of being made up of brothers and sisters from different Christian churches.

"Pope Francis, who has followed the matter with particular attention from the beginning, also intended to confirm the work of the pontifical delegate in recent months, thanking him for having acted in full harmony with the Holy See, with the sole intention of alleviating the sufferings of both individuals and the community.

"The Holy Father finally expressed his solicitude in accompanying the journey of conversion and recovery of the Community according to the guidelines and modalities clearly defined in the singular decree of May 13 2020, the contents of which the Pope reiterates and asks that they be put into effect."

Then Montini reviews all the times in which an appeal presented to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura against a Vatican decree could not be accepted because that decree enjoyed none other than approval by the pope “in specific form,” even obtained after the presentation of the appeal to the signatura. And he discovers that while at first these cases were very rare, after 2013 they multiply enormously.
2013 is the year of Bergoglio's election to the papal throne.
Not only that. It appears that among the acts approved “in specific form” by Pope Francis there often appear “clear and blatant violations of the procedure referred to in art. 126 of the General Regulations of the Roman Curia,” violations that “can legitimately lead to the presumption of nullity of the approval in specific form by the Supreme Pontiff.”

"Humble" Jorge Bergoglio, the merciless dictator pope (unless you're a homo, a tree-hugger, or a pro-abort politician).

I still don’t know what Bianchi...very “progressive” and thus you would think he was right up Bergoglio’s alley...did to get bounced. That has never been explained, probably not even to Bianchi.

Just a bad hair day for Bergoglio?

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