What is behind the Vatileaks plot?
Gloria.TV – News Briefs 07/06/2012 03:52:28
Photo ~ Cardinal Bertone, left, and Cardinal Sodano, who apparently tried to block his appointment as Secretary of State (CNS photo)What is behind the Vatileaks plot?
Of all the many explanations I have read of the motivations behind this conspiracy, the one that makes most sense to me is that of the Italian journalist Andrea Gagliarducci in his blog MondayVatican this week, which I need to quote at length:
Let’s make a step back in the past. In June 2006, the Pope had to announce that – after his return to Rome from his trip to Bavaria – his first act of governance will be the change of the Secretary of State, with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone replacing Cardinal Angelo Sodano.
… Many in the Curia were discontent. Bertone not only was not a career diplomat – as almost all the secretaries of state have been in recent centuries – but he came from the ranks of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which he was the secretary from 1995 to 2003.
He was the number two man, with Joseph Ratzinger as prefect, and now he is again becoming the main collaborator of the new Pope.
Even after his election as Pope, Ratzinger has kept him as an adviser and a friend: not a week was gone by that they have not spoken together or seen each other.
Bertone’s appointment as Secretary of State signed a sort of “vindication” for the Holy Office.
Called by this name until the 1960s, the Congregation was referred to within the Vatican as «la Suprema». Its highest official was the Pope himself, and the rest of the Curia hinged upon it. But then came Paul VI, and the Secretariat of State became the central axis of the Curia.
With John Paul II, who had little interest in Church governance, the power of the Secretariat of State in the Church’s internal and external affairs grew even greater.
It is no surprise that in the last change of the papacy, the two head honchos of diplomacy and of the Curia – Cardinals Sodano and Achille Silvestrini – were the ones most staunchly opposed to the election of Ratzinger, just as they later tried to block the appointment of Bertone.
Read more at the Catholic Herald. UK
