About the Conclave: Unusual Specific Names You Read About Will Have Been Selected to Deceive You and Manipulate the Process

News pages and newspapers are filled today with reports on who are those most likely to succeed Francis as the next Roman Pontiff. While Romans have for centuries cautioned outsiders that, "he who enters [the conclave] as pope, leaves as a Cardinal," this is not exactly what we have in mind.

What we do have in mind is what happened in the 2013 conclave, a conclave that should have never taken place and was caused by the absurd and indefensible decision of Benedict XVI to resign the papacy instead of remaining in office until his natural death.

It is quite possible that Benedict had in mind a specific successor: Cardinal Scola. If so, he did not make any effort to have him elected. But the greatest manipulation, both in the news and in rumors, regarded the election of Cardinal Bergoglio. Despite being already over the age of retirement, he had been the progressive candidate in the 2005 conclave, and therefore was a plausible candidate. 

The McCarrick Report is here -- But First, Remember This Video Where McCarrick Boasted of Helping to Elect Cardinal Bergoglio

 First things first.

In a speech at the liberal Villanova University in 2013, then-cardinal Ted McCarrick boasted of his decisive influence in the election of Cardinal Bergoglio as Pope. Other actors confirm that McCarrick's support was very important for the election:

 

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The full text of the Report released today by the Vatican (461 pages long!) is here.

Some initial observations:

1) The mainstream media has copied and pasted the Vatican's spin on McCarrick, that it was all Pope John Paul II's fault.  While traditional Catholics were certainly no fans of the late pontiff, isn't there more to the story?

2) Jorge Bergoglio, McCarrick's friend, was -- according to McCarrick in the above video -- identified as a liberal cardinal who could be elected pope.  McCarrick urged others in the college of cardinals to talk him up.  No mention of this, mainstream media?  Reading the early press reports, it seems as if Bergoglio had never heard of Uncle Ted.

3)  The JPII cult -- from George Weigel to Opus Dei -- has some serious explaining to do.

4) JPII's canonization is now a textbook example of why several decades should pass before even thinking about canonizing a pope -- or most anyone, for that matter.

For the record: Linking some dots, on the record, regarding Ivereigh's "Team Bergoglio" and the 2013 Abdication and Conclave

1. Card. Murphy-O'Connor disclosed in an exclusive interview with the Herald last September:

A Dearth of Investigative Reporting on the Abdication and the Conclave - and a very important Parable to enlighten our friends in the media

And he was in the Sistine Chapel in March 2013!

EXPLOSIVE - The Pianist: "How I Plan to Manipulate the Synod At Will" One of our most important translations

Special Guest-Post: "Behind the Scenes: How Francis Personally Picked Cupich for Chicago" by Don Pio Pace

We are very honored to post this third guest-post by a very wise, knowledgeable, and highly influential cleric, writing under the pen name of don Pio Pace.

____________________________________

A Highly Troubling Sign: How Cupich was Chosen for Chicago

a guest-post by Fr. Pio Pace

It is very necessary to understand the full measure of the nomination of the extreme liberal bishop Blase Cupich to the see of Chicago, replacing Cardinal Francis George.

Cupich's promotion to this particularly important position, that usually entails the elevation to the cardinalatial red, was a personal decision of Pope Francis himself. More precisely, the Pope imposed his candidate on Cardinal Ouellet and the Congregation for Bishops, under the desperate suggestion of the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Abp. Carlo Maria Viganò. We know well that those men who are particularly authoritarian, such as Francis, also are, in many cases, easily manipulated by those who learn how to read them. Moreover, it is enough to waggle before the eyes of the Pope the scarecrow called Cardinal Burke to lead him in one direction or another, because he has kept against the Prefect of the Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura an extremely strong rancor after the 2013 conclave, in which the American Cardinal was one of those who tried to thwart his path to the pontificate.

Rorate Correspondent Dr. Rao, from Rome

Habemus papam

After only 24 hours and 5 ballots.
Let us wait. Live feed below.
Open thread for comments.

Yikes! Paul?...

Fumata nera... no conclusive vote after three ballots.

_____________

And, from our friends at Fratres in Unum (sidebar), could we expect a Paul VII?

Globo – With the ongoing conclave in the Vatican, the expectation of the family of Card. Odilo Scherer grows as much as the matter becomes the only one mentioned in he streets of Toledo, western Paraná [state]. Though cautious about the election that will choose the new Pope, the siblings of the Brazilian Cardinal, who is among the front-runners, already guess the name that Odilo will choose if he is elected. "If it happens, it's Paul," bets brother Lotario Scherer.

Conclave reports by Dr. John Rao III - Day One: From Catholic Merriment to Catholic Sobriety

Dr. John Rao, for Rorate Caeli 

Rome/Vatican City (Mar. 12, 2013) - Nothing has happened. But, then again, nothing was expected to happen. Anything happening too quickly would probably not have been good news for the election of good candidates anyway. Instead, two weeks before the Triduum, the cardinals have themselves been “entombed”, waiting for the “rebirth” of the Papacy - a rebirth that is in their hands. We believing Catholics are in that tomb with them, doing our part as members of the Mystical Body of Christ to get them out of their entombment successfully through our prayers. A Catholic sobriety has temporarily eclipsed Catholic merriment.

Yesterday’s celebratory mood continued into the Mass for the Election of the Roman Pontiff this morning. Saint Peter’s was already two thirds full when I made my entry, around 8:45. Many of the early arrivals were seminarians, nuns, and correspondents with temporary approval to cover the Conclave, all of whom, like myself, lacked guaranteed seating. One hour later, fifteen minutes before the Mass began, the Basilica was packed.

Whether Benedict XVI was responsible for this or not, the entire morning retained the renewed sense of dignity that I associate with his Pontificate. Mass was preceded by the Rosary, and I am happy to say that the temporarily accredited journalists sitting around me said it, in Latin, as well. In fact, each of the three young members of the press sitting to my right received communion - on the tongue.

Many of my readers will probably have seen at least parts of the liturgy that followed. It, too, was as dignified as the new liturgy can possibly be, and all in Latin, except for the readings and bidding prayers, with Canon One of the new missal being used. Listening to Catholic tourists among those present for the ceremony, I got the clear impression that this was the first time that many of them had seen and heard anything this traditional in their lives.

And so it begins...

The 75th Conclave for the election of the 266th Supreme Pontiff.

May God help His Holy Church.

Homily of the Mass pro eligendo Romano Pontifice - by the Dean of the College of Cardinals

"Forever I will sing the mercies of the Lord" is the hymn that resounds once again near the tomb of the Apostle Peter in this important hour of the history of the Holy Church of Christ. These are the words of Psalm 88 that have flowed from our lips to adore, give thanks and beg the Father who is in heaven. "Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo": is the beautiful Latin text that has introduced us into contemplation of the One who always watches over his Church with love, sustaining her on her journey down through the ages, and giving her life through his Holy Spirit.

Such an interior attitude is ours today as we wish to offer ourselves with Christ to the Father who is in heaven, to thank him for the loving assistance that he always reserves for the Holy Church, and in particular for the brilliant Pontificate that he granted to us through the life and work of the 265th Successor of Peter, the beloved and venerable Pontiff Benedict XVI, to whom we renew in this moment all of our gratitude.

At the same time today, we implore the Lord, that through the pastoral sollicitude of the Cardinal Fathers, He may soon grant another Good Shepherd to his Holy Church. In this hour, faith in the promise of Christ sustains us in the indefectible character of the church. Indeed Jesus said to Peter: "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her." (Mt. 16:18).

Conclave reports by Dr. John Rao II - A Brief Note on the Eve of the Conclave

Dr. John Rao, Rorate Caeli correspondent

Rome/Vatican City (Mar. 11, 2013) - The Franks used to call Sundays “the days the Catholic Church makes merry”. From what I can see around me in the few hours that I have been here, something similar might be said for the time when a new pope is elected. A carnival-like spirit of excitement is more than evident everywhere.

But why should it not be a moment when “the Catholic Church makes merry”? Why should it not, in some sense, be a period of celebration? After all, we are selecting a successor to St. Peter and telling the world that, despite all of the assaults of hell upon her, from inside as well as without, the Mystical Body of Christ is still a palpable reality. And the merriment felt here now is just a foretaste of what St. John Chrysostom tells us Rome will be like on the last day, when the bodies of all of its saints rise from the dead, and Saints Peter and Paul adore their God and see and talk to one another in the flesh for all eternity.

Aside from calling attention to the contagious excitement around me, I can also pass on one small, encouraging bit of information that will be of interest to the readers of Rorate Caeli. Aside from the usual papabili, such as Cardinals Scola and Scherer, the name of one solid favorite, Malcolm Ranjith, has come up more than once in my hearing in just one single afternoon.

No less a source than the highly influential Corriere della Sera has noted Ranjith’s “outsider” chances, but other rather knowledgeable figures on the Vatican side of the Tiber as well. I heard him mentioned as having some dozens of supporters in the College - a not insignificant number if a horse race develops. Interestingly enough, moreover, Ranjith’s name was brought up not for, for instance, the liturgy - but on other grounds entirely. What I heard underlined was the fact that he is an impressive polyglot - Ranjith is conversant in many, many languages, a skill of great value to a Supreme Pontiff - and that his renowned administrative, diplomatic, and conciliatory talents have been confirmed by the honored role that he plays in public affairs in his own religiously divided country.

In short, in addition to quiet conservative cardinals who might find him attractive for his doctrinal and liturgical solidity, there may be others who would join in electing Ranjith for neutral reasons of serious merit.

Will a horse race develop? Or has some consensus already been achieved, guaranteeing a short conclave and, perhaps, an end of any traditional-minded merriment here in the Eternal City? Tomorrow will begin to let us know the answer. Till then.

Pray for Electors through the Poor Souls

Below, please find the sixty-seventh posting of enrolled Souls of the Rorate Caeli Purgatorial Society. Also, we have an urgent prayer request, intended to help the cardinal electors choose a man truly worthy of being the next Pontiff and ushering in a full restoration of the traditional Mass and Faith. 

From one of our Society priests:

It is a well founded probability according to St. Thomas that the saints who are specifically related to us under some title, say of blood, profession, nationality, devotion, character and so on, intercede for us more efficaciously. This is why there are specific patrons for individuals and particular intentions. So, I suggest that during the conclave, we pray and do works of penance and charity for the departed parents, brethren, friends and benefactors of the cardinal electors with this in mind, that these souls will gratefully and efficaciously intercede for the prudence and good judgment of the cardinal they are related to. 

We could have a kind of "Conclave Chaplet" of 115 invocations which we could use along with a list of the names of the cardinal electors who will actually be voting adding at the end a memorare for Pope Benedict, who got us into this situation in the first place. Of course, if one doesn't have a list, one can just pray the 115 Hail Marys. 

Suggested prayer: 

"O Mother of Sorrows, as you held the Body and Blood of your Divine Son upon your breast as His Soul went down among the dead to free them and grant them the Blessed Vision of His Divinity, so assist Holy Church as she bears this same Body and Blood on her altars and entreat your Son to descend again among the dead and free the souls of departed cardinals, and the souls of the departed parents, brethren, friends, and benefactors of Cardinal NN, that they might be powerful and grateful intercessors on his behalf to elect as Roman Pontiff the one who is most pleasing to God and helpful to the faithful, and strong against the enemies of Christ's Mystical Body on earth. To this end I apply to this cardinal's dead the indulgence offered as I pray. Memorare, etc." 

We could pray this for each of the electors, and also offer our indulgences, penances and works of mercy for their dead as well. I have already celebrated Holy Mass for all the dear dead of the cardinal electors.

How to enroll souls: please email me at [email protected] and submit as follows: "Name, State, Country." If you want to enroll entire families, simply write in the email: "The Jones family, Ohio, USA". Individual names are preferred. Be greedy -- send in as many as you wish and forward this posting to friends as well.

2013 Conclave - Il Foglio editorialThe springtime has failed, the time has come for the sowing season

This is what the Church needs: more sowing, less pollination from worldly sources. The springtime experiment has failed.

Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry - October: autumn sowing

Hoping for autumn sowing in the Church, not springtime pollination

I do not believe in the myth of the Vatican springtime, nor in the springtime of the Catholic Church and the Papacy. The Church must sow as is done in autumn and not be pollinated like an April flower. The owners of international public opinion, even the Catholic one, are demanding a new embracing of the present world, that is, meeting it halfway, going along with the temperament of peoples and cultures, being skillful imitators, formalizing new rules of life in the Church which copy the criteria of the judgment of the world from the waves of modernity, from the 16th century onwards, thus abolishing old rules and cancelling old features.

If this is the case, it might be better [for the Church] to close up shop. The experiment of pollination has already been done. It was a highminded moment and it was certainly ambitious, but it has failed and it is not the fault of the Roman Curia if the way of treating old and new problems in the religion business has caused the numbing of souls, if hearts are not being warmed, and if faith and reason are not built upon that sovereign balance which was attempted by both John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

We already have the United Nations and UNESCO, we already have the universal philosophy of human rights, we have humanitarian consciousness and we have contemporaneous idols and myths such as equality, liberty and fraternity. In fact, we have a perennial breeze of springtime light that hides every semblance of pain, sin, redemption, of the supernatural, of interior and collective salvation, of penance, reconciliation and mercy. Furthermore, we have a realistic and mediocre idea of personal faith, seen as a lifestyle, not as an experience that cannot be explained, a greater, efficacious grace transcending conscience - a measure of irrationality inside rationality -, and also the exterior beauty of the evangelical vision, in imitation of Christ - of relying on the Messiah , God Incarnate.

The problem does not lie in allowing priests to marry; so be it. The problem is that, even if one is married or not, the flesh remains the place of concupiscence, the sweet pleasure of a moment, an instant, in contrast with the immaculate fragrance of trusting in the Eternal. If in governing the great body of the Church it were necessary to emancipate Her from the reformism of the great Pope Gregory VII (as Hans Küng suggests), and if this should be left to an assembly of debating bishops instead of the infallible Vicar of Christ - a theological elaboration which is becoming less and less Petrine and less and less Roman, more connected to the patterns of life and spirituality of those primitive, praying ethnic groups, which only the reforms of Paul, Augustine, Constantine and Gregory transformed into Ecclesia, into the People of God, into a universal institution, modeled on the pre-Christian and secular organization of the Roman Empire - then so be it, so may the will of the clergy and lay and progressive theology be done. But, in the end, what we will have is a copy of an already well-known Kantian moral-code bent to the demands of the childish hedonism of our times with no sign of grace nor a return to God - whatever this may mean for believers and unbelievers alike.

I hope that the [General] Congregations go to the root [of the problem], and that the sowing will begin, after years of pollination and abandonment.

[Italian daily Il Foglio, Editorial, March 4, 2013. Translated and adapted by Contributor Francesca Romana]

Booklets and notices - March 12, 2012 events

Booklets and notices of the events of March 12, 2013 - Mass for the election of the Roman Pontiff and procession and entrance into Conclave - are available here at the Office of Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff.

The malice of Vaticanists...

Never has the malice of Vaticanists appeared more clearly than in the past few weeks and days. The shallowness of their articles is evident to all, as well as the ridiculous use of their spaces in the press (especially in the mainstream Italian media) not to report, but obviously to amplify the wishes and desires of certain politically-minded clerics who are their friends, and to make it seem like they actually know the position and mind of most or all 115 Cardinal-Electors - most of whom have indeed kept the severe reserve and silence required by law and by common sense.

So the result of the conclave will either be a surprising choice that will electrify the faithful, those Catholics who actually go to Mass every Sunday, and practice the works of mercy, and pass on the faith to their children at home, and those Priests who toil every day to bring the Sacraments to the faithful and lead them to eternal salvation; a choice which will once again call into question the sanity and mostly the honesty of these religion correspondents. Or it will be exactly as they are predicting now, "frontrunners" Cardinal A or Cardinal B. In the first case, it is the already negligible credibility of the press that is called into question; in the second, it is the image of the Church that is once again tarnished as if it were a merely human institution beholden to worldly and political interests surreptitiously manipulated by the media.

Who will "win" the conclave, paraphrasing the words of Benedict XVI in his February 14 address regarding the Council: the Church of God, or the Church of the Media? The real Church or the virtual Church? May all Holy Popes, from Saint Peter to Saint Pius X, intercede for the Church of Rome they loved till death.

Notes: 1. It is unlikely that the Conclave will reach full three days without a conclusive vote. (Mar. 9, 2013). 
2. If the first ballot in the morning or in the afternoon is conclusive, the Sistine Chapel chimney will signal the election before the foreseen "watching time".

Conclave reports by Dr. John Rao I - En route to Rome

Forty years ago, one popped up at the airport at the last moment and filled whatever seat might be open to any city that might be within shooting distance of his final destination. Something appropriate always turned up. Today, getting anywhere at a price that does not involve compromising a family’s entire future - and spending an unwanted day in a connecting airport situated in the opposite direction from one’s goal as well - is more difficult than obtaining an audience with a pastoral-minded prelate.

In any case, what this has meant is that I have had to delay my departure for Rome until tonight. I will be staying in the Eternal City for ten days with my good friend, Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro-Carámbula, the Rome Director of Human Life International, who lives just a few minutes walk from St. Peter’s Square. My plan is not only to cover the Conclave and the beginning of the Pontificate for Rorate Caeli, but also to ascertain what our fellow Traditionalists in Europe think of our prospects for the future under the new pontiff.

One silver lining of the delay has been the chance to give my regularly scheduled Church History lecture this Sunday afternoon. Preparing that conference has offered further scope for mulling over our contemporary situation in an historical context both chastening and hopeful in its lessons. In the case of today’s talk, those lessons concern the negative realities of what has positively been spoken of in the Press as the need for “transparency” in Church deliberations.

My topic this Sunday involves the Conclave of 1559 that followed upon the death of Paul IV---one of the most fractious of the Renaissance and Reformation era. Its deliberations began on September 5th and continued through the night of December 25th. After almost seventy fruitless votes, one of the numerous attempts to win the papal throne through election by vocal acclamation finally succeeded. Giovanni Angelo Medici of Milan, a man of modest birth (and only either dubiously or very distantly related to the Florentine family of the same name), left the Conclave as Pope Pius IV (1559-1563).