Posted on 11/30/2010 2:00:49 PM PST by NYer
Wikileaks information has been disclosed by Rome Reports that the U.S. intelligence services were completely caught off guard and surprised at the election of then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.
U.S. intelligence was expecting a Latin American as the next pope, and predicted that then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger would have lost in the first round voting.
The rest from Father Zuhlsdorf:
Before the election the staff of the US embassy to the Holy See sent speculations to Washington about the one to be elected.
“The first factor will be age, the cardinals will seek someone who is neither too young nor too old, because they don’t want to have another funeral and conclave quickly” but “they also want to avoid having a long pontificate like that of John Paul II.” Furthermore, “it will be a person in reasonably good health”. Another element will be “linguistic ability” and he will have to know Italian.
Yes, folks, this is penetrating analysis from the US embassy to the Holy See.
Going on… they opined that it would be a Latin American cardinal. Perhaps they were glued to CNN. Had they been listening to FoxNews and people like me (was a contributor at the time) they would have gotten it right. But I digress.
On the day of the election itself, there was a cable to Washington which pooh-poohed the possible election of Ratzinger. Apparently the election shocked them. They were also bamboolzed by media reports that Ratzinger was an “autocratic despot”. That’s what you get when your remote TV control is stuck on CNN and you hang only with liberal clergy in Rome. On the other hand, when one of them high up in the embassy met Cardinal Ratzinger he was described as “surprisingly humble, spiritual and easy to deal with”.
There were speculations about a Rome/Germany axis for the Church. Lord… did they really have people that dense working in the US embassy back then? And that was during an administration friendly toward the Holy See.
On 12 May 2005 there was the aforementioned 7 page document “Benedict XVI: Looking Ahead to the New Pontificate” which projected what was going to happen with an “identikit” of the new Pope. It suggested that this Pope would act in continuity with his predecessor. It included the line: “in time of crisis the Church finds refuge in European identity. They also suggested that this new Pope would battle secularism in the USA and the rest of the West, turning his attention also to developing nations, in particular Latin America were there are many disappointed Catholics because a Latin American Pope wasn’t elected.
From what I can glean from the article in La Stampa, the folks in the US embassy to the Holy See were mired in cliches and working from preconceptions which blinded them to the facts in front of their faces before the election. As a personal aside: about a year before the death of John Paul, I made a bet with another journalist about who would be elected… not whom we wanted to see elected, but whom we thought actually would be. We could choose three in order of likelihood. My choice of Ratzinger at the top of the list brought out a laugh of incredulity. But to be fair I laughed also at his choice of Cardinal Danneels. That anecdote serves to show something of the mindset of a lot of people floating close to the center of things, those most “in the know” and involved in speculation (a Vatican watcher obsession).
It seems to me that the Catholic Church is fairly important. The US State Department would do well to put competent, serious people who really understand the workings of the Church in their embassy to the Holy See.
(see Father Z)
(Cross-posted at The American Catholic)
Ping!
I seem to recall that the media also expected a Latin American as Pope. Not sure that this means anything...
This alone tells you that we have an ignorant bunch of self important losers, in charge of our “intelligence”! They are group of liberal democrats demagogues.
Even my 10 year old could see this one coming!
Isn’t it amazing that many of us on this site predicted that he would be a front runner and probably selection at the time.
Our State Department is full of leftists who could not concieve that the main theological architect of the last decade for the prior Pope would be chosen after his tremendous success.
But apparently not as important as it was before Vatican II, where the baby was thrown out with the bath water.
Prior to this catastrophe, the Church was a beacon and a sort of bellweather that other Christians looked to for some sign or guidance as did other faiths. Additionally, very little mud was thrown at the Church which had remained unchanged for over a thousand years and could point to a chain of pontiffs from Saint Peter.
identity politics is the only thing they understand
It seems that US intel does not have a pipeline to the thinking of The Holy Spirit.
The Church is so provincial and narrow-minded. We need some new Communist blood in there.
Huh..... And yet, given the central role he played in Vatican initiatives, he was JPII's obvious choice for the succession, for at least a couple of years prior to the event.
It's obvious that the State Department is incompetent, staffed with anti-American leftists/Marxists twits and is not serving the the nation well.
Over the years I've read the news and thought of things from their perspective and their approach is correct far more often than it is incorrect.
Just a thought on why I wouldn't expect anything from an embassy to be of much value whether it's classified or not.
Regards
That’s why I never get too sucked in by the conspiracy theorists about the all-powerfulness of our govt. Not even close.
CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM
US Department of State
OK...........so we got dis Joy-man guy, called Ratsinker but Vito da janitor don't tink too much about him so we can prolly fuh-get about dat and den we got dis udder Eye-talian guy called Martini who may just be da one.
But we shouldn't fuh-get about some French guy called Loo-steegah who apparently..........is Jewish!!
Go figure.
Das about it.
END OF MEMORANDUM
What cracks me up is that they seem to think that choosing the pope is a political thing and not a God thing.
So was I. In fact, I bet against it on Tradesports.
But I'd just converted, and was pretty uninformed.
Anyway, this wikileaks crap is gossip. It's none of anyone's business what these "documents" say.
In fact, their whole approach to religion is political. Everything they do is political. I sometimes argue with some of them, and they just don't get that the Church is not a democracy and that it isn't just another political action group. You'd think they didn't believe in God, or something.
LOL that taught US state dept did it LOL!
When the Cardinal came out and said, "Habemus Papam: Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum, Dominum Josephum . . . " at that point I yelled to the whole office, "IT'S RATZINGER!" I had been hoping against hope.
Of course, the other folks in my office are two Methodists, a Baptist, and a Presbyterian, so they had no idea what I was yelling. I had to explain. They still didn't get what had just happened. I sure did though. "Te Deum laudamus: te Dominum confitemur. Te aeternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur."
Guess I spent all my time watching Fox during the funeral and
The Latin American cardinal fits the State Dept ‘diversity’ template. Then the RCC would have needed an African, then Asian cardinal elected Pope. It doesn’t matter who sits in the White House, below the Secretary and the appointed Ambassadors, the State Dept is the State Dept.
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