Free Republic

New book suggests St. Gallen Mafia agreement may have led to Pope Benedict XVI’s resignationAuthor Julia Meloni tells us that Martini's own confessor claimed that Benedict's resignation had been “scripted since his pontificate's beginning – because Martini had shifted his votes to Ratzinger at the 2005 Conclave."(LifeSiteNews) — The American scholar and columnist Julia Meloni has just published her long-awaited, excellent, and deeply researched history of the Sankt Gallen Mafia, a group of progressive bishops regularly meeting in Switzerland and plotting to further revolutionize the Catholic Church. The Sankt Gallen Mafia: Exposing the Secret Reformist Group Within the Church tells...

As homecomings go, the Pope's first foreign trip since he became leader of the world's one billion Roman Catholics will be bitter sweet. About 500,000 young people will next week welcome Pope Benedict to the World Youth Day celebrations in Germany, a display of religious faith testifying to his Church's vigour.But his return to the land of his birth will also be a confrontation between an austere enforcer of doctrinal orthodoxy and a country that embodies the secular, Godless culture he rails against.According to his spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the four days the Pope will spend in Germany are a "very...